The Persecutors of the Zemstvo and the Hannibals of Liberalism[24]

Written:Written June 1901Published:First published in December 1901 inZarya, No. 2-3.

      Signed:T. P..Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Foreign Languages Publishing House,1961,

      Moscow,Volume 5,

      pages31-80.Translated:Transcription\Markup:R. CymbalaandD. WaltersPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2003).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

Ithas been said of the Russian peasant that he is poorest of all in the
      consciousness of his poverty; of the ordinary Russian subject, it may be
      said that, while he is poor in civil rights, he is poorest of all in the
      consciousness of his lack of rights. Just as the peasant has grown
      accustomed to his wretched poverty, to living his life without pondering
      over the causes of his wretchedness, or the possibility of removing it, so
      the plain Russian subject has become accustomed to the omnipotence of the
      government, to living on without a thought as to whether the government
      can retain its arbitrary power any longer and whether, side by side with
      it, there are not forces undermining the outmoded political system. A
      particularly good “antidote” to this political apathy and
      somnolence is usually contained in the “secret
      documents”[1]which reveal that, not only desperate cutthroats and confirmed enemies of
      the government, but also members of the government itself, including
      ministers, and even the tsar, realise the tottering state of the autocracy
      and seek ways and means to improve their position, which they consider
      totally unsatisfactory. One such document is the Memorandum drawn up by
      Witte, who, having quarrelled with the Minister of the Interior,
      Goremykin, over the question of introducing Zemstvo institutions in the
      outlying regions, decided to display his perspicacity and his loyalty to
      the autocracy by drawing up an indictment against the

      Zemstvo.[2]

Thecharge is levelled against the Zemstvo that it is incompatible with
      autocracy, that by its very nature it is constitutional, that its
      existence inevitably gives rise to friction and conflict between the
      representatives of the public and the government. The indictment is drawn
      up on the basis of vast (relatively) and fairly well prepared material,
      and since it is an indictment concerning a political affair (a rather
      peculiar one at that), we may be sure that it will be read with no less
      interest and will prove no less useful, than were the indictments
      in political trials once published in our newspapers.

Letus endeavour to determine whether the assertion that our Zemstvo is
      constitutional is borne out by the facts, and if so, to what extent, and
      in what precise sense.

Inthis matter, the epoch in which the Zemstvo was introduced is of
      particular importance. The fall of serfdom was a historical event of such
      magnitude that it inevitably made a rent in the police veil concealing
      class antagonisms. The most solidified and best educated class, and the
      one most accustomed to political power—the nobility— displayed
      a very definite desire to restrict the power of the autocracy by means of
      representative institutions. The reference to this fact in Witte’s
      Memorandum is extremely instructive. He says: “Declarations
      concerning the necessity of ’representation for the nobility’ and
      concerning ’the right of the Russian nation to elect its representatives
      to advise the supreme authority’ were made at assemblies of nobles as far
      back as 1859-60.” “Even the word ’constitution’ was

      uttered.”[3]“Several

      Gubernia[4]Committeesfor the Peasant Question and individual members of commit tees called
      before the drafting commissions urged the necessity of drawing the public
      into participation in the administration. ’Deputies are openly striving
      for a constitution,’ wrote Nikitenko in his diary in 1859.”

“When,after the promulgation of the Regulations of February 19,

      1861,[25]the hopes entertained in the autocracy were far from realised, and,
      moreover, when the ’redder’ elements in the administration (like
      N. Milyutin) were alienated from the implementation of the Regulations,
      the movement in favour of ’representation’ became more nearly
      unanimous. It found expression in resolutions moved in many assemblies of
      nobles in 1862, and in petitions drawn up by the assemblies in Novgorod,
      Tula, Smolensk, Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Tver. The most remarkable of
      these was the Moscow petition, which pleaded for local self-government,
      public trials, obligatory redemption of peasant lands, publication of
      budgets, freedom of the press, and the convening in Moscow of a National
      Duma representing all classes for the purpose of drawing up a complete
      system of reforms. Sharpest were the decisions adopted and the petition
      drawn up by the nobility of Tver on February 2, urging the necessity of
      introducing a number of civil and economic reforms (e.g., equality of
      rights for all social-estates, obligatory redemption of

      peas antlands) and ’the convocation of
      elected representatives of the whole Russian nation as the only means for
      satisfactorily settling the questions raised, but not settled, in the
      Regulations of February

      19’.[5]“Despitethe administrative and judicial penalties inflicted on the
      initiators of the Tver

      petition[6]–continues

      Dragomanov—(not forthe petition directly, but for the sharp motivation attached to the
      collective resignation of the civil

      mediators[26]),

      declarations in the same
      spirit were made at various assemblies of nobles in 1862 and early in
      1863, at which projects for local self-government were also drawn up.“Atthis time, a constitutional movement was in progress also among theraznochintsi,[27]finding expression there in more or less revolutionary secret societies
      and proclamations:Velikoruss(between August and November 1861,
      officers like Obruchev and others took part in its publication),Zemskaya Duma(1862),Zemlya i Volya(1862-63)....Velikorusspublished a draft petition which, as
      many said, was to have been submitted to the tsar during the Thousand
      Years of Russia celebrations in August 1862." The draft petition statedinter alia: ’May it please Your Majesty to convene in one of the
      capitals of our Russian fatherland, in Moscow or in St. Petersburg, the
      representatives of the Russian nation in order that they may draw up a
      constitution for

      Russia....”[7]

“When,after the promulgation of the Regulations of February 19,

      1861,[25]the hopes entertained in the autocracy were far from realised, and,
      moreover, when the ’redder’ elements in the administration (like
      N. Milyutin) were alienated from the implementation of the Regulations,
      the movement in favour of ’representation’ became more nearly
      unanimous. It found expression in resolutions moved in many assemblies of
      nobles in 1862, and in petitions drawn up by the assemblies in Novgorod,
      Tula, Smolensk, Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Tver. The most remarkable of
      these was the Moscow petition, which pleaded for local self-government,
      public trials, obligatory redemption of peasant lands, publication of
      budgets, freedom of the press, and the convening in Moscow of a National
      Duma representing all classes for the purpose of drawing up a complete
      system of reforms. Sharpest were the decisions adopted and the petition
      drawn up by the nobility of Tver on February 2, urging the necessity of
      introducing a number of civil and economic reforms (e.g., equality of
      rights for all social-estates, obligatory redemption of

      peas antlands) and ’the convocation of
      elected representatives of the whole Russian nation as the only means for
      satisfactorily settling the questions raised, but not settled, in the
      Regulations of February

      19’.[5]

“Despitethe administrative and judicial penalties inflicted on the
      initiators of the Tver

      petition[6]–continues

      Dragomanov—(not forthe petition directly, but for the sharp motivation attached to the
      collective resignation of the civil

      mediators[26]),

      declarations in the same
      spirit were made at various assemblies of nobles in 1862 and early in
      1863, at which projects for local self-government were also drawn up.

“Atthis time, a constitutional movement was in progress also among theraznochintsi,[27]finding expression there in more or less revolutionary secret societies
      and proclamations:Velikoruss(between August and November 1861,
      officers like Obruchev and others took part in its publication),Zemskaya Duma(1862),Zemlya i Volya(1862-63)....Velikorusspublished a draft petition which, as
      many said, was to have been submitted to the tsar during the Thousand
      Years of Russia celebrations in August 1862." The draft petition statedinter alia: ’May it please Your Majesty to convene in one of the
      capitals of our Russian fatherland, in Moscow or in St. Petersburg, the
      representatives of the Russian nation in order that they may draw up a
      constitution for

      Russia....”[7]

Ifwe recall also the proclamationTo Young

	Russia,[28]the numerous arrests and the Draconic punishments inflicted upon the
      “political” criminals (Obruchev, Mikhailov, and others),
      culminating in the frame-up of

      Chernyshevsky[29]and his being sentenced illegally to penal servitude, we shall have a
      complete picture of the social situation that gave rise to the Zemstvo
      reform. Witte states only half the truth in his Memorandum when he says
      that “the idea underlying the establishment of Zemstvo institutions
      was undoubtedly a political one”, that governing circles
      “undoubtedly took into consideration” the liberal and
      constitutionalist aspirations of the people. The hidebound official view
      on social phenomena, which the author of the Memorandum reveals
      throughout, is here demonstrated by his ignoring therevolutionarymovement and by his concealing the Draconic
      measures of repression with which the governmentprotecteditself
      against the onset of the revolutionary “party”. True, from our
      modern viewpoint, it seems strange to speak of a revolutionary
      “party” and of its onset at the beginning of the
      sixties. Forty years of historical experience have made us more exacting
      with regard to what may be called revolutionary movements and
      revolutionary onsets. But it must not be forgotten that at that time,
      after thirty years of the ruleof Nicholas I, no one could have foreseen the course of events, no one
      could have estimated the government’s real strength of resistance or the
      real strength of the people’s indignation. Even the most cautious and
      sober politician could not but acknowledge the possibility of a
      revolutionary outbreak and the serious danger of a peasant revolt—in
      the obtaining conditions of the revival of the democratic movement in
      Europe; the ferment in Poland; the discontent in Finland; the demands for
      political reforms made by the entire press and by all the nobility; the
      widespread distribution ofKolokolthrough out Russia; the
      powerful appeals of Chernyshevsky, who was able, by means even of censored
      articles, to educate genuinerevolutionaries;the appearance of
      proclamations; the ferment among the peasants, who were “very

      often”[8]compelledby armed force and bloodshed to accept the Regulations
      thatstripped them of everything; the refusal of whole groups of civil
      mediators from among the nobility to applysuchRegulations, and,
      finally, the student disorders. Under such circumstances, the autocratic
      government, which held it to be its lofty mission to protect, at all
      costs, the omnipotence and irresponsibility of the court camarilla and the
      army of official leeches, on the one hand, and to support the worst
      representatives of the exploiting classes, on the other—such a
      governmenthad no other recoursethan ruthlessly to exterminate
      individuals, the conscious and indomitable enemies of tyranny and
      exploitation (i.e., “the ringleaders” of “the
      revolutionary party”), terrify the masses of discontented people, and
      bribe them with small concessions. This meant penal servitude for those
      who preferred to remain silent rather than pour forth stupid or
      hypocritical phrases about the “great emancipation”; reforms
      (innocuous for the autocracy and the exploiting classes) for
      those who waxed enthusiastic over the liberalism of the government and the
      era of progress.

Wedo not wish to suggest that these calculated reactionary police tactics
      were clearly conceived and systematically pursued by all, or even by a
      few, of the members of the ruling clique. Some of them, on account of
      their narrow-mindedness, may not have pondered on the significance of
      these tactics as a whole and may have been childishly enthusiastic about
      “liberalism”, failing to observe its police mantling.  In
      general, however, there is no doubt that the collective experience and
      collective reasoning of the rulers compelled them to pursue these tactics
      unswervingly. Not in vain did most of the grandees and notables undergo a
      prolonged training in bureaucratic and police methods in the serviceof Nicholas I, and were, so to speak, case-hardened by fire and
      water. They remembered how sovereigns had at one time flirted with
      liberalism, and at another acted as the executioners of the

      Radishchevs[30]and “let loose” the

      Arakcheyevs[31]at their loyal subjects; they remembered December 14,

      1825,[32]and they played the role of gendarme of Europe the Russian Government had
      played in

      1848-49.[33]The historical experience of autocracy not only compelled the government
      to pursue tactics of intimidation and corruption, but also compelled many
      independent liberals to recommend these tactics to the government. In
      proof of this, we shall quote the opinions of Koshelev and Kavelin. In his
      pamphlet,Constitution, Autocracy, and the National Duma(Leipzig, 1862), A. Koshelev expressesoppositionto a
      constitution, advocates the convening of a National Advisory Duma, and
      anticipates the following objection:

“Toconvene a National Duma means to lead Russia towards revolution, i.e.,
      to repeat, in Russia, theÉtats

	généraux,[34]which were subsequently transformed into the Convention and which came to an end with the
      events of 1792, the proscriptions, the guillotine, thenoyades,[Mass executions by
	drowning.—Ed.]etc.”  “No, gentlemen,” replied Koshelev, “it will not be the
      convocation of a National Duma that will prepare the ground for
      revolution, as you understand it. Revolution will come much more surely
      and rapidly as a result of the hesitant and contradictory actions of the
      government, one step forward—one step backward, edicts and laws
      impossible of execution, the restraints placed upon thought and speech; as
      a result of the police (open, and what is worse, secret) surveillance over
      the actions of the social-estates and of private persons, the petty
      persecution of certain individuals, the plunder of the Treasury, the
      squandering of public funds and the lavish granting of rewards, the
      incapacity of statesmen and their alienation from Russia, etc., etc. A
      country just awakening from centuries of oppression can be more surely
      driven to revolution (again as you understand it) by military executions,
      solitary confinement, and banishment; for rankling wounds are incomparably
      more sensitive and painful than fresh wounds. But have no fear, the
      revolution, which, as you suppose, was brought about in France by
      journalists and other writers, will not break out in Russia. Let us also
      hope that no society of desperate hotheads, who choose assassination as a
      means of attaining their ends, will be formed in Russia (although it is
      more difficult to vouch for that). What is more probable and dangerous is
      that, influenced by the split and unobserved by the rural, urban, and
      secret police, an alliance will be established between the peasants and
      the petty-bourgeois townspeople,which will be joined by young and old, writers and adherents ofVelikoruss, YoungRussia, etc. Such an all-destructive
      alliance, advocating equality, not before, but despite, the law (What
      matchless liberalism! We, of course, are in favour of equality, but not of
      equalitydespitethe law—the law which destroys equality!),
      not the popular, historical village commune, but its morbid progeny, and
      not the rule of reason which certain office-holders fear so much, hut the
      rule of brute force, which these office-holders so readily
      employ—such an alliance 1 say, is far more probable in Russia and
      may be far more powerful than the moderate, well-meaning, and independent
      opposition to the government which our bureaucrats abhor so much and which
      they try so hard to restrict arid suppress. Do not imagine that the party
      of the inner, secret, and anonymous press is small and weak; do not
      imagine that you have plucked it out root and branch. No! By prevent lug
      the youth from completing their education, by treating youthful pranks as
      if they were political crimes, by petty persecution and police
      surveillance you have increased the strength of that party tenfold, and
      have multiplied it and spread it throughout the Empire. What will our
      statesmen resort to in the face of an outbreak resulting from such an
      alliance? Armed force? But will that be absolutely reliable?” (pp. 49-51).

“Toconvene a National Duma means to lead Russia towards revolution, i.e.,
      to repeat, in Russia, theÉtats

	généraux,[34]which were subsequently transformed into the Convention and which came to an end with the
      events of 1792, the proscriptions, the guillotine, thenoyades,[Mass executions by
	drowning.—Ed.]etc.”  “No, gentlemen,” replied Koshelev, “it will not be the
      convocation of a National Duma that will prepare the ground for
      revolution, as you understand it. Revolution will come much more surely
      and rapidly as a result of the hesitant and contradictory actions of the
      government, one step forward—one step backward, edicts and laws
      impossible of execution, the restraints placed upon thought and speech; as
      a result of the police (open, and what is worse, secret) surveillance over
      the actions of the social-estates and of private persons, the petty
      persecution of certain individuals, the plunder of the Treasury, the
      squandering of public funds and the lavish granting of rewards, the
      incapacity of statesmen and their alienation from Russia, etc., etc. A
      country just awakening from centuries of oppression can be more surely
      driven to revolution (again as you understand it) by military executions,
      solitary confinement, and banishment; for rankling wounds are incomparably
      more sensitive and painful than fresh wounds. But have no fear, the
      revolution, which, as you suppose, was brought about in France by
      journalists and other writers, will not break out in Russia. Let us also
      hope that no society of desperate hotheads, who choose assassination as a
      means of attaining their ends, will be formed in Russia (although it is
      more difficult to vouch for that). What is more probable and dangerous is
      that, influenced by the split and unobserved by the rural, urban, and
      secret police, an alliance will be established between the peasants and
      the petty-bourgeois townspeople,which will be joined by young and old, writers and adherents ofVelikoruss, YoungRussia, etc. Such an all-destructive
      alliance, advocating equality, not before, but despite, the law (What
      matchless liberalism! We, of course, are in favour of equality, but not of
      equalitydespitethe law—the law which destroys equality!),
      not the popular, historical village commune, but its morbid progeny, and
      not the rule of reason which certain office-holders fear so much, hut the
      rule of brute force, which these office-holders so readily
      employ—such an alliance 1 say, is far more probable in Russia and
      may be far more powerful than the moderate, well-meaning, and independent
      opposition to the government which our bureaucrats abhor so much and which
      they try so hard to restrict arid suppress. Do not imagine that the party
      of the inner, secret, and anonymous press is small and weak; do not
      imagine that you have plucked it out root and branch. No! By prevent lug
      the youth from completing their education, by treating youthful pranks as
      if they were political crimes, by petty persecution and police
      surveillance you have increased the strength of that party tenfold, and
      have multiplied it and spread it throughout the Empire. What will our
      statesmen resort to in the face of an outbreak resulting from such an
      alliance? Armed force? But will that be absolutely reliable?” (pp. 49-51).

Donot the pompous phrases of this tirade obviously suggest the tactics:
      destroy the “hotheads” and the adherents of the
      “alliance between the peasants and the petty-bourgeois
      townspeople”; satisfy and disunite the “well-meaning and
      moderate opposition” through concessions? But the government proved
      to be cleverer and more agile than the Koshelevs imagined; it conceded
      much less than a National “Advisory” Duma.

Andthe following from a private letter written by K. D. Kavelin to

      Herzen,[35]dated August 6, 1862: "... The news from Russia is not so bad, in my
      opinion. It was not Nicholas Solovyevich that was arrested, but
      Alexander. The arrests do not surprise me and, I confess, do not seem to
      me outrageous. A revolutionary party considers every means to over throw
      the government justified, while the government defends itself by every
      means at its disposal. Arrests and banishment under the reign of the
      despicable Nicholas were quite another thing. People then died for their
      ideas, their convictions, their faith, and their utterances. I would like
      to see you in the government’s boots and see what you would do against a
      party that is secretly and openly working against you. I like
      Chernyshevsky very, very much, but never in my life have I seen such abrouillon[an irascible, unsociablebully, a sower of

      discord],[9]such a tactless and cock sure fellow! To perish in vain, for absolutely no
      reason at all! There cannot be the least doubt now that the conflagrations
      have a connection with the

      leaflets.”[10]What an example of servile-professorial profundity! It is the
      revolutionaries who are to blame for everything; it is they who are
      conceited enough to hiss at phrase-mongering liberals, they who are so
      impudent as to work secretly and openly against the government and so
      tactless as to get themselves incarcerated in the Fortress of Peter and
      Paul. He, too, the liberal professor, would punish people like these
      “with all the means at his disposal”, were he in power.

Thus,the Zemstvo reform was one of the concessions forced from the
      autocratic government by public ferment and revolutionary pressure. We
      have dealt with the character of this pressure in detail in order to
      supplement and correct the picture outlined in the Memorandum by its
      bureaucratic author, who obscured the struggle that had given rise to this
      concession. Nevertheless, the half-hearted and pusillanimous character of
      this concession is quite clearly described in the Memorandum:

“Atfirst, when the Zemstvo reform was just being undertaken, it was no
      doubt intended as a first step toward the introduction of representative

      institutions[11];

      but later, when Count Lanskoi and N. A. Milyutin were replaced by Count
      Valuyev, there was an obvious desire, as even the ex-Minister of the
      Interior admits, to act in a spirit of conciliation’, ’softly and
      evasively’. ’The government has no clearidea of its aims,’ he said at the time. In short, an attempt was
      made— unfortunately made so often by statesmen and always with bad
      results for everyone—to act evasively between two opposite opinions,
      to satisfy liberal aspirations and preserve the existing system.”

“Atfirst, when the Zemstvo reform was just being undertaken, it was no
      doubt intended as a first step toward the introduction of representative

      institutions[11];

      but later, when Count Lanskoi and N. A. Milyutin were replaced by Count
      Valuyev, there was an obvious desire, as even the ex-Minister of the
      Interior admits, to act in a spirit of conciliation’, ’softly and
      evasively’. ’The government has no clearidea of its aims,’ he said at the time. In short, an attempt was
      made— unfortunately made so often by statesmen and always with bad
      results for everyone—to act evasively between two opposite opinions,
      to satisfy liberal aspirations and preserve the existing system.”

Thepharisaical word “unfortunately” is highly amusing. A
      minister of the police government describes as casual the tactics which
      the governmentcould not but pursueand did pursue in adopting
      the factory inspection laws, as well as the law on the reduction of the
      working day (June 2, 1897), and which it is now (1901) pursuing in General
      Vannovsky’s flirtation with the

      “public”.[36]

“Onthe one hand, it was stated in the explanatory Memorandum
      attached to the regulations governing Zemstvo institutions that the
      purpose of the proposed law was to develop as completely and as
      consistently as possible the principle of local self-government, and that
      ’the Zemstvo administration is merely a special organ of one and the same
      state authority’....Severnaya Pochta, then the organ of the
      Ministry of the Interior, hinted broadly that the institutions to be
      established were to serve as schools for representative bodies.“Onthe other hand, ... the Zemstvo institutions are described in the
      explanatory Memorandum as private and as public institutions, subject to
      the general laws in the same way as individual societies and private
      persons are subject....“Boththe provisions in the Regulations of 1864 and, in particular,
      all the subsequent measures adopted by the Ministry of the Interior in
      relation to the Zemstvo institutions clearly indicate that the
      ’independence of the Zemstvo institutions was seen as a great danger, and
      that the government was afraid to permit the proper development of these
      institutions, beingfully aware of what that would lead to. [Our
      italics throughout.] ... There is no doubt that those who had to carry out
      the Zemstvo reform did somerely as a concession to public
      opinion, in order, as the explanatory Memorandum stated, ’to limit
      theunrealisable expectations and radical aspirationswhich have
      been arousedamong the various social-estatesin connection with
      the establishment of the Zemstvo institutions’; at the same time, these
      people fully understood it [the reform?]and strove to prevent the
      proper development of the Zemstvo, to give it a private character,
      restrict its powers, etc. While pacifying the liberals with the promise
      that the first step would not be the last and declaring, or, to be more
      precise, echoing the adherents of the liberal trend, that it was necessary
      to grant the Zemstvo institutions real and independent powers, Count
      Valuyev,in the very act of drafting the Regulations of 1864, strove
      in every way to restrict the powers of those institutions and place them
      under strict administrative guardianship....“Bereftof a single guiding idea, representing a compromise between two
      opposite trends, the Zemstvo institutions, in the form in which they were
      established by the Regulations of 1864, proved in practiceto be out of accord with the fundamental idea of local self-government on
      which they were based, as well as with the administrative system into
      which they were mechanically inserted and which, moreover, had neither
      been reformed nor adapted to the new conditions of life. The Regulations
      of 181$4 sought to reconcile the irreconcilable and in that way to satisfy
      both the advocates and opponents of Zemstvo self-government.The
      former were offered superficialities and hopes for the future, while in
      order to satisfy the latter the powers of the Zemstvo institutions were
      given an extremely elastic definition.”

“Onthe one hand, it was stated in the explanatory Memorandum
      attached to the regulations governing Zemstvo institutions that the
      purpose of the proposed law was to develop as completely and as
      consistently as possible the principle of local self-government, and that
      ’the Zemstvo administration is merely a special organ of one and the same
      state authority’....Severnaya Pochta, then the organ of the
      Ministry of the Interior, hinted broadly that the institutions to be
      established were to serve as schools for representative bodies.

“Onthe other hand, ... the Zemstvo institutions are described in the
      explanatory Memorandum as private and as public institutions, subject to
      the general laws in the same way as individual societies and private
      persons are subject....

“Boththe provisions in the Regulations of 1864 and, in particular,
      all the subsequent measures adopted by the Ministry of the Interior in
      relation to the Zemstvo institutions clearly indicate that the
      ’independence of the Zemstvo institutions was seen as a great danger, and
      that the government was afraid to permit the proper development of these
      institutions, beingfully aware of what that would lead to. [Our
      italics throughout.] ... There is no doubt that those who had to carry out
      the Zemstvo reform did somerely as a concession to public
      opinion, in order, as the explanatory Memorandum stated, ’to limit
      theunrealisable expectations and radical aspirationswhich have
      been arousedamong the various social-estatesin connection with
      the establishment of the Zemstvo institutions’; at the same time, these
      people fully understood it [the reform?]and strove to prevent the
      proper development of the Zemstvo, to give it a private character,
      restrict its powers, etc. While pacifying the liberals with the promise
      that the first step would not be the last and declaring, or, to be more
      precise, echoing the adherents of the liberal trend, that it was necessary
      to grant the Zemstvo institutions real and independent powers, Count
      Valuyev,in the very act of drafting the Regulations of 1864, strove
      in every way to restrict the powers of those institutions and place them
      under strict administrative guardianship....

“Bereftof a single guiding idea, representing a compromise between two
      opposite trends, the Zemstvo institutions, in the form in which they were
      established by the Regulations of 1864, proved in practiceto be out of accord with the fundamental idea of local self-government on
      which they were based, as well as with the administrative system into
      which they were mechanically inserted and which, moreover, had neither
      been reformed nor adapted to the new conditions of life. The Regulations
      of 181$4 sought to reconcile the irreconcilable and in that way to satisfy
      both the advocates and opponents of Zemstvo self-government.The
      former were offered superficialities and hopes for the future, while in
      order to satisfy the latter the powers of the Zemstvo institutions were
      given an extremely elastic definition.”

Whatpointed words our ministers sometimes accidentally let drop when they
      desire to put a spoke in the wheel of one of their colleagues and to
      display their profundity, and how useful it would, be for every one of our
      self-complacent Russians and all admirers of the “great”
      reforms to hang on their walls in golden frames the wise police maxims:
      “Pacify the liberals with the promise that the first step will not
      be the last”, “offer” them “superficialities and
      hopes for the future”! It would be particularly useful at the present time
      to refer to these precepts when reading in articles or other items in
      newspapers about General Vannovsky’s “heartfelt solicitude”.

Thus,from the very beginning, the Zemstvo was doomed to serve as a fifth
      wheel to the Wagon of Russian state administration, a wheeltoleratedby the bureaucracy only insofar as it would not disturb
      its absolute authority, while the role of the representatives of the
      population was restrict ed to the simple technical fulfilment of the
      functions outlined by this very bureaucracy. The Zemstvos had no executive
      organs of their own, they had to act through the police, they had no
      contact with one another, and they were immediately placed under the
      control of the administration. Having made such a harmless concession, the
      government, on .the very day after the establishment of the Zemstvos,
      began systematically to impose restrictions upon them; the almighty
      bureaucratic cliquecould notreconcile itself to the elected
      representation of the social-estates and began to persecute it in every
      possible way. A very interesting part of the Memorandum is the summary of
      facts on this persecution, notwithstanding its obvious incompleteness.

Wehave seen how pusillanimous and irrational was the attitude of the liberals
      towards the revolutionary movement at the beginning of the sixties. Instead of
      supporting the"alliance of the petty-bourgeois townspeople and the peasants with
      the adherents ofVelikoruss”, they feared this
      “alliance” and held it as a bogy with which to scare the
      government. Instead of rising to the defence of the leaders of the
      democratic movement, persecuted by the government, they pharisaically
      washed their hands of them and justified the action of the
      government. This treacherous policy of grandiloquence and shameful
      flabbiness met with poetic justice. Having dealt with those who proved
      themselves capable, not merely of jabbering about liberty, but offightingfor it, the government felt sufficiently strong to
      squeeze the liberals out of even the minor and inferior positions which
      they had occupied “with the permission of the authorities”. So
      long as the “alliance of the petty-bourgeois townspeople and the
      peasants” with the revolutionaries represented a serious menace, the
      Ministry of the Interior itself mumbled words about a “school of
      representative institutions”, but when the “tactless and
      cock-sure” hecklers and hotheads had been removed, the
      “scholars” were treated with an iron hand. Then a tragicomical
      epic began. The Zemstvo appealed for an extension of its rights, but wasdeprivedof one right after another and given
      “fatherly” homilies in answer to its petitions. But let the
      historical dates, even those presented in the Memorandum, speak for
      themselves.

OnOctober 12, 1866, the Ministry of the Interior issued a circular
      subordinating the Zemstvo employees completely to government
      institutions. On November 21 a law was passed restricting the right of the
      Zemstvo in taxing commercial and industrial establishments. The
      St. Petersburg Zemstvo Assembly, in 1867, sharply criticised this law, and
      (on the proposal of Count A. P. Shuvalov) adopted a decision to petition
      the government to arrange for the questions touched upon by this law to be
      discussed by “the combined forces and with the simultaneous efforts
      of the central administration and the Zemstvo”. The government’s
      answer to this petition was to close down the St. Petersburg Zemstvo
      institutions and to resort to reprisals: the chairman of the
      St. Petersburg Zemstvo Board, Kruse, was banished to Orenburg; Count
      Shuvalov—to Paris; and Senator Luboshchinsky was ordered to
      resign.Severnaya Pockta, organ of the Ministry of the Interior,
      published an article in which “thesestern measures of punishment were explained by the fact that the Zemstvo
      Assemblies, too, from the very opening of their sessions, had acted
      contrary to the law [to what law? and why were the law-breakers not
      brought totrial, when only shortly before a speedy, just, and
      merciful court procedure had been introduced?]; that instead of supporting
      the Zemstvo Assemblies of other gubernias, utilising for that purpose the
      rights which His Majesty has graciously granted them for exercising proper
      care over the local economic interests of the Zemstvo in their charge
      [i.e., instead of being humbly submissive and following the
      “intentions” of the officialdom], they strove continuously, by
      falsely explaining the case and misinterpreting the laws,to rouse
      sentiments of mistrust and lack of respect for the government”.After such an admonition, it is not surprising that “the other
      Zemstvos failed to support the St. Petersburg Zemstvo, although the law of
      November 21, 1866, had everywhere given rise to deep-going discontent, so
      that at meetings many people declared it to be tantamount to destroying
      the Zemstvos”.

OnDecember 16, 1866, the Senate issued a “clarification”
      granting the governors of the gubernias the right to refuse endorsement to
      any person elected by a Zemstvo Assembly whom the respective governor
      deemed politically unreliable. On May 4, 1867, there followed another
      Senate interpretation to the effect that communication of Zemstvo
      proposals to other gubernias was contrary to law, since Zemstvo
      institutions must concern themselves only with local affairs. On June 13
      the Council of State issued a ruling, with Imperial sanction, prohibiting
      publication of decisions, minutes, reports of discussions, etc., of the
      meetings of Zemstvo, urban, and social-estate assemblies without the
      consent of the gubernia authorities. Further, that law extended the powers
      of chairmen of Zemstvo Assemblies; it granted them the right to close
      meetings at their discretion and imposed upon them the obligation,under threat of punishment, to close any meeting at which
      questions not in consonance with the law were presented for
      discussion. The public greeted this measure with hostility, regarding it
      as a serious restriction of Zemstvo activity. “Every one knows,”
      Nikitenko entered in his diary, “that the Zemstvos.are tied hand and
      foot by the new ·regulations which give the chairmen ofAssemblies and the governors of gubernias almost unlimited powers over
      them." The circular of October 8, 1868 makes it obligatory to obtain the
      consent of the governor for the publication even of the reports of the
      Zemstvo Boards and restricts inter-communication between Zemstvos. In 1869
      the office of inspector of elementary schools was established for the
      purpose of taking the effective management of elementary education out of
      the hands of the Zemstvos. A regulation issued by the Committee of
      Ministers on September 19, 1869, which received Imperial sanction,
      declares that “neither in their composition nor in their fundamental
      principles are Zemstvo institutions governmental authorities”. The
      law of July 4 and the circular of October 22, 1870 confirm and increase
      the subordination of Zemstvo employees to the governors of the
      gubernias. In 1871 instructions were issued to the inspectors of
      elementary schools empowering them to dismiss teachers who were·
      deemed politically unreliable and to suspend all decisions of the school
      councils and submit them to the school guardians for their sanction. On
      December 25, 1873, Alexander II, in a rescript addressed to the Minister
      of Education, expressed the fear thatunless proper guardianship and
      control are exercised over them, the elementary schools may be
      converted “intoan instrument for the moral corruption of the
      people, some attempts at which have already been disclosed,” and he
      ordered the marshals of the nobility, by their close co-operation, to
      preserve the moral influence of the schools. In 1874 a new regulation
      concerning the elementary schools was issued, which placed the management
      of the schools entirely in the hands of the head masters. The Zemstvo
      “protested”—if a petition pleading that the law be revised and
      that the representatives of the Zemstvo take part in this revision (the
      petition of the Kazan Zemstvo in 1874) can, without irony, be described as
      a protest. Of course, the petition was rejected. Etc., etc,

Suchwas the first course of lessons given to Russian citizens in the
      “school of representative institutions” opened by the Ministry of
      the Interior. Fortunately, in addition to the political scholars who, in
      connection with the constitutionaldeclarations of the sixties, wrote that “it is time to give up all
      nonsense and get down to business, and business is now in the Zemstvo
      institutions and nowhere

      else”,[12]there were in Russia also “hotheads”, who were not satisfied
      with such “tact” and went with revolutionary propaganda among
      the people. Although they adhered to a theory which in essence was not
      revolutionary, their propaganda roused a spirit of discontent and protest
      among broad strata of the educated youth. Despite their utopian theory,
      which rejected political struggle, the movement led to a desperate grapple
      between the government and a handful of heroes, to a struggle for
      political freedom. Thanks to this struggle, and to it alone, the situation
      again changed; the government was once more compelled to make concessions,
      and the liberals once again revealed their political immaturity, their
      inability to support the fighters and, bring real pressure to bear upon
      the government. The constitutional aspirations of the Zemstvo became very
      marked, but these proved to be but a feeble “impulse”, despite
      the fact that Zemstvo liberalism in itself had made decided political
      progress. Particularly noteworthy was its attempt to establish an illegal
      party and to set up its own political organ. In his Memorandum, Witte
      summarises some of these illegal writings (of Cannan, Dragomanov,
      Tikhomirov), in order to demonstrate the “slippery path”
      (p. 98) upon which the Zemstvo had entered. In the late seventies, several
      congresses of Zemstvo liberals were held. The liberals decided “to
      take measures to bring about at least a temporary cessation of the
      destructive activities of the extreme revolutionary party, for they were
      convinced that nothing could be achieved by peaceful means if the
      terrorists continued to irritate and alarm the government by threats and
      acts of violence” (p. 99). Thus, instead of making an effort to
      extend the struggle, to secure considerable public support for individual
      revolutionaries, to organise some sort of public pressure (in the form of
      demonstrations, of refusal by the Zemstvo to carry out compulsory
      expenditures, etc.), the liberals again appealed for
      “tact”—“not to irritate”the government!—to employ the “peaceful means” that had
      so brilliantly proved their futility in the

      sixties![13]Of course, the revolutionaries refused to agree to any cessation or
      suspension of fighting actions. The Zemstvo supporters then formed the
      League of Oppositional Elements, which was later transformed into the
      Zemstvo Union and Self-Government Society, or Zemstvo Union. The programme
      of the Zemstvo Union contained the following demands: (1) freedom of
      speech and the press, (2) inviolability of the person, and (3) the
      convocation of a Constituent Assembly. An attempt to publish illegal
      pamphlets in Galicia failed (the Austrian police seized the manuscripts
      and the persons who intended to print them), and in August 1881Volnoye

	Slovo,[37]edited in Geneva by Dragomanov (ox-professor of Kiev University), became
      the official organ of the Zemstvo Union. “In the final analysis,”
      wrote Dragomanov in 1888, “the attempt to publishVolnoye
      Slovoas a Zemstvo organ cannot be regarded as successful, if only
      for the reason that Zemstvo material did not begin to reach the editorial
      office regularly until late in 1882 and publication ceased in May 1883"
      (op. cit., p. 40). The failure of the liberal organ was a natural effect
      of the weakness of the liberal movement. On November 20, 1878, Alexander
      II delivered a speech at a meeting of representatives of the
      social-estates in Moscow, in which he expressed the hope that “he
      would obtain their co-operation in checking the erring younger generation
      which was pursuing the fatal path whither suspect persons were striving to
      lead it.” Later, an appeal for public co-operation appeared inPravitelstvenny

	Vestnik[38](No. 186, 1878). In reply, five Zemstvo Assemblies (Kharkov, Poltava,
      Chernigov, Samara, and Tver) issued declarations urging the need to
      convene a National Assembly. “We may believe also,” says Witte in
      his Memorandum, after summarising in detail the contentsof these petitions, of which only three appeared in the press in full,
      “that the Zemstvo declarations on the convocation of a National
      Assembly would have been far more numerous, had not the Ministry of the
      Interior taken timely steps to prevent such declarations; the marshals of
      the nobility, as chairmen of gubernia Zemstvo Assemblies, received
      circular letters instructing them to prevent even the reading of such
      petitions at meetings of the assemblies. In some places, arrests were made
      and councillors banished. In Chernigov the meeting hall was invaded and
      forcibly cleared by gendarmes” (p. 104).

Theliberal magazines and newspapers supported the movement. A petition
      signed by “twenty-five prominent Moscow citizens” addressed to
      Loris-Melikov asked for the convocation of an independent assembly of
      representatives of the Zemstvos which should be given the right to
      participate in the government of the nation. In appointing Loris-Melikov
      Minister of the Interior, the government wasapparentlymaking a
      concession. But onlyapparently;for not only were no decisive
      steps taken, there were not even any declarations that might be called
      positive and incapable of misinterpretation. Loris-Melikov called together
      the editors of St. Petersburg periodicals and explained to them “the
      programme”: to learn the wishes, needs, etc., of the population, to
      enable the Zemstvos, etc., to enjoy their legal rights (the liberal
      programme guarantees the Zemstvos those “rights” of which the
      law systematically deprives them!), etc. The author of the Memorandum
      states:

“Throughthe medium of these interlocutors the Minister’s programme
      was circulated throughout Russia—for which purpose they had been
      called together. In point of fact, the programme did not promise anything
      definite. One could read into it anything one desired, i.e., everything or
      nothing. A leaflet secretly distributed at the time was right in its way
      [only in “its” way, not absolutely in “every” way!]
      when it stated that the programme simultaneously wagged a ’fox tail’ and
      gnashed ’wolf’s fangs’. This attack on the programme and its author is the
      more understandable, be cause, in communicating the. programme to the
      representatives of the press, the Count strongly urged them ’not to
      confuse and not to excite the public mind needlessly with theirvisionary illusions’." But the liberal Zemstvo supporters refused to
      listen to thetruthcontained in the secret leaflet and accepted
      the wagging of the “fox tail” as a “new policy”
      worthy of confidence. “The Zemstvos believed and sympathised with
      the government,” says the Memorandum, quoting an illegally published
      pamphlet,The Opinions of the Zemstvo Assemblies on the Present State
      of Russia, “and they seemed afraid of running too far ahead and
      of pestering the government with excessive requests.” A characteristic
      admission on the part of the Zemstvo adherents, who enjoyed freedom of
      expression! The Zemstvo Union at its congress in 1880 had only just
      decided “to strive to secure central popular representation, of
      which an absolute condition would be a single chamber and universal
      suffrage”, when this decision tostrive to securewas
      carried out by the tactic of refraining from“running too far
      ahead”and“believing and sympathising
      with”ambiguous declarations that bind no one to anything! With
      unpardonable naïveté, the Zemstvo adherents imagined that presenting
      petitions meant “striving to secure”—and petitions
      “poured in from the Zemstvos in abundance”. On January 28,1881, Loris-Melikov submitted a most humble Memorial to the tsar
      proposing the establishment of a commission of Zemstvo representatives
      with advisory powers only, for the purpose of drafting the laws His
      Majesty would be pleased to indicate. The Special Council set up by
      Alexander II approved of this measure; the findings of the Council of
      February17, 1881, were confirmed by the Tsar, who also approved
      the text of the government announcement submitted by Loris-Melikov.

“Undoubtedly,”writes Witte, “the establishment of such a
      purely advisory commission did not yet establish a constitution,” but, he
      continues, it can hardly be denied that it represented a step forward
      (following the reforms of the six ties) towards a constitution and towards
      nothing else. The author then repeats a statement contained in the foreign
      press to the effect that upon reading Loris-Melikov’s Memorial, Alexander
      II exclaimed: “Why, this is theÉtats
      généraux....What is proposed to us is neither more nor
      less than the Assembly of Notables of Louis

      XVI.”[39]

Wewould observe, on our part, that under certain circumstances the
      application of Loris-Melikov’s proposalmight have beena step towards a constitution, but it might also
      not have been; everything depended on which prevailed

      —the pressure of the revolutionary party and the liberal public, or
      the counter-pressure of the very powerful, compact party of persisting
      supporters of the autocracy that were unscrupulous in the methods they
      employed. If, however, we speak, not of what might have happened, but of
      what actually did happen, then we must admit the indubitable fact that the
      government waswavering.Some members of the government were in
      favour of strenuously resisting the liberals, while others were in favour
      of making concessions. But—and this is particularly
      important—even the latter wavered, having no very definite programme
      and never rising above the level of scheming bureaucrats.

Inhis Memorandum, Witte writes:

“CountLoris-Melikov appeared to be afraid to look the affair straight in
      the face and to define his programme with precision; he continued the evasive
      policy—in another direction, it is true—that had been adopted by
      Count Valuyev towards the Zemstvo institutions.“Aseven the legal press rightly pointed out at the time, the programme announced by Loris-Melikov was distinguished by its extreme
      vagueness. This vagueness is observed in all the Count’s subsequent
      actions and pronouncements. On the one hand, he declared that the
      autocracy was ’separated from the people’, that ’he looks to public sup
      port as the principal force...’, and that he regarded the proposed reform
      ’not as something final, but merely as a first step’, etc. On the other
      band, the Count declared at the same time to the press representatives
      that ’the hopes aroused among the people are nothing but a visionary
      illusion...’, and in his most humble Memorial to the Tsar, he stated categorically that a National Assembly would be ’a dangerous experiment of
      reverting to the past...’, that the measure he proposed would not in any
      way restrict the powers of the autocracy, since it had nothing in common
      with Western constitutional forms. Generally speaking, as L. Tikhomirov
      has fitly remarked, the Memorial itself is distinguished by its
      wonderfully confused wording” (p. 117).

“CountLoris-Melikov appeared to be afraid to look the affair straight in
      the face and to define his programme with precision; he continued the evasive
      policy—in another direction, it is true—that had been adopted by
      Count Valuyev towards the Zemstvo institutions.

“Aseven the legal press rightly pointed out at the time, the programme announced by Loris-Melikov was distinguished by its extreme
      vagueness. This vagueness is observed in all the Count’s subsequent
      actions and pronouncements. On the one hand, he declared that the
      autocracy was ’separated from the people’, that ’he looks to public sup
      port as the principal force...’, and that he regarded the proposed reform
      ’not as something final, but merely as a first step’, etc. On the other
      band, the Count declared at the same time to the press representatives
      that ’the hopes aroused among the people are nothing but a visionary
      illusion...’, and in his most humble Memorial to the Tsar, he stated categorically that a National Assembly would be ’a dangerous experiment of
      reverting to the past...’, that the measure he proposed would not in any
      way restrict the powers of the autocracy, since it had nothing in common
      with Western constitutional forms. Generally speaking, as L. Tikhomirov
      has fitly remarked, the Memorial itself is distinguished by its
      wonderfully confused wording” (p. 117).

Inhis attitude towards the freedomfightersLoris-Melikov, that
      notorious hero of the “dictatorship of the

      heart”,[40]displayed “a cruelty unparalleled, before or since, in ordering the
      execution of a seventeen year-old youth for a printed leaflet found in his
      possession. Loris-Melikov did not forget the most remote parts of Siberia, and
      he did everything to worsen the conditions of the exiles suffering for their
      propaganda” (V. Zasulich inSotsialDemokrat,[41]No. 1, p. 84). In view of the government’s wavering, only a force
      capable of earnest struggle could have secured a constitution; but such
      a force was lacking— the revolutionaries had exhausted themselves
      by their effort of
March 1[42];

      there was neither a broad movement nor a strong organisation of the
      working class, and the liberal public on this occasion again proved to
      be so politically immature that even after the assassination of
      Alexander II it restricted itself to the mere presentation of
      petitions. The Zemstvos, the municipalities, and the liberal press
      (Poryadok, Strana,

	Golos[14]),

      all presented petitions. Particularly loyal, artful, and nebulous were
      the petitions of the liberal authors of memoranda, such as the Marquis
      of Velepolski, Professor Chicherin, and Professor Gradovsky. Witte’s
      Memorandum reproduces their content from a pamphlet published in

      London,[15]The Constitution of Count Loris-Melikov(Free Russian Press
      Fund, London, 1893). Those authors invented “ingenious devices for
      bringing the monarch to cross the Rubicon without his being aware of
      it”. It stands to reason that all these cautious petitions and
      artful devices proved utterly useless without a revolutionary force, and
      the autocratic party triumphed—triumphed despite the fact that on
      March

      8,1881,a majority of the Council of Ministers (seven against five) had votedin favourof Loris-Melikov’s proposal. (So the pamphlet has it;
      but Witte, who assiduously cites its authors, for some reason or other
      declares in his Memorandum: “It is not authentically known what
      happened at this meeting of March 8 and what it resulted in; it would be
      rash to rely upon the rumours that have reached the foreign press,”
      p. 124). On April 29, 1881, the Manifesto on the reaffirmation and
      preservation of autocracy, described by Katkov as “manna from
      heaven”, was promulgated.

Forthe second time since the emancipation of the peasants the
      revolutionary tide was swept back, and following it and as a consequence
      of it, the liberal movement for a second time gave way toreaction, over which Russian progressive society, of course,
      raised bitter lamentations. We are past masters of the art of lamentation;
      we lament the tactlessness and self-assurance of revolutionaries in
      harassing the government; we lament the government’s indecisiveness when,
      finding that it is not confronted by a real force, it makes
      pseudo-concessions and takes back with one hand what it has given with the
      other; we lament “the age without ideas and ideals”, when the
      government, having settled scores with revolutionaries whom the people
      failed to support, hastens to make up for lost time and fortifies itself
      for a fresh onslaught.

Theepoch of the “dictatorship of the heart”, as
      Loris-Melikov’s ministry has been described, proved to our liberals that
      even the “constitutionalism” of one of the ministers, even of
      the Prime Minister, with the government wavering and the Council of
      Ministers approving “the first step towards reform” by a
      majority, still guarantees precisely nothing, if there is no serious
      social force capable of compelling the government to surrender. It is
      interesting to note also that the government of Alexander III did not show
      its fangs immediately upon the promulgation of the Manifesto reaffirming
      the autocracy, but found it necessary for a time to fool the
      “public”. In employing the term “fool” the public,
      we do not suggest that the government adopted the Machiavellian scheme of
      some minister, notable, or other. It cannot be over-emphasised that the
      system of pseudo-concessions and of seemingly important steps “to
      meet” public opinion has become an integral part of the policy of
      every modern government, including the Russian, for the Russian Government
      has for many generations recognised the necessity of reckoning with public
      opinion in one way or another, and in the course of many generations has
      trained statesmen in the shrewd art of domestic diplomacy. Such a diplomat
      was Count Ignatyev, whose appointment to the Ministry of the Interior in
      place of Loris-Melikov was intended to cover thegovernment’s retreat towards out and out reaction. More than once Ignatyev
      proved himself a demagogue and deceiver of the worst type, so much so that
      Witte reveals in his Memorandum not a little “police
      complacency” when he describes the period of his office as an
      “unsuccessful attempt to create a country with local self-government
      and with an autocratic tsar at its head”. True, this is precisely
      the “formula” advanced at the time by I. S. Aksakov; it was
      utilised by the government for its manoeuvres and was assailed by Katkov,
      who proved conclusively that there is a necessary connection between local
      self-government and a constitution. But it would be short-sighted to
      attemptto explainthe well-known tactics of the police
      government (tactics deriving from its very nature) by the prevalence of
      this or that political view at the given moment.

Ignatyevissued a circular, in which he promised that the government would
      “take urgent measures to introduce proper methods to secure, with
      the maximum of success, the active participation of local public figures
      in the execution of His Majesty’s designs”. The Zemstvos responded
      to this “call” by petitions pleading for the convocation of an
      assembly “of the elected representatives of the people” (from
      the memorandum of a member of the Cherepovets Zemstvo; the governor did
      not even permit the opinion of a member of the Kirillov Zemstvo to be
      published). The government instruct ed the governors to “take no
      further action” with regard to these petitions; “at the same
      time, measures were apparently taken to prevent other assemblies from
      submitting similar petitions”. The notorious attempt was made to
      call a conference of “qualified people” hand-picked by the
      ministers (for the purpose of discussing questions of reducing land
      redemption

      payments,[43]regulating migration, reforming local government,
      etc.). “The work of the committees of experts evoked no sympathy
      among the public and,not withstanding all the precautionary
      measures, even aroused a direct protest from the Zemstvos. Twelve
      Zemstvo Assemblies petitioned that Zemstvo representatives be invited to
      participate in legislative activity, not only on special occasions and by
      appointment from the government, but permanently and by election from the
      Zemstvos.” An attempt by the Samara Zemstvo to adopt a similar motion was
      preventedby the chairman, “after which the Assembly broke up in
      protest” (Dragomanov, op. cit., p. 29; Memorandum, p. 131). That
      Count Ignatyevdupedthe Zemstvos is apparent from the following
      fact: “Mr. Ustimovich, Marshal of the Poltava Nobility and author of
      the draft Constitutional Petition of 1879, openly declared in the Gubernia
      Assembly of Nobles that he had receivedpositive assurances[sic!] from Count Ignatyev that the government would call upon
      the representatives of the country to take part in legislative
      activity” (Dragomanov, ibid.).

Thesefrauds of Ignatyev crowned the work of covering up the government’s
      transition to a decisively new policy, and not without good reason did
      D. A. Tolstoi, who on May 30, 1882, was appointed Minister of the
      Interior, earn the nickname “Minister of Struggle”. Petitions
      from the Zemstvos even for the convening of some sort of private
      conferences were unceremoniously rejected. There was even a case of a
      government commission replacing a Zemstvo Board and banishing its members,
      on a complaint lodged by a governor against “the systematic
      opposition” of the Zemstvo (of Cherepovets). D. A. Tolstoi, a
      faithful disciple and follower of Katkov, went further and decided to
      “reform” the Zemstvo institutions. The idea underlying the
      reform (which, as we have seen, was confirmed by history) was that
      “the opposition to the government has strongly entrenched itself in
      the Zemstvos” (p. 139 of the Memorandum, dealing with the original
      plan for Zemstvo reform). D. A. Tolstoi planned. to replace the Zemstvo
      Boards with bureaus subordinated to the governor and to make all decisions
      of the Zemstvo Assemblies subject to the governor’s sanction. This would
      have been a truly “radical” reform; but it is extremely
      interesting to note that even this disciple of Katkov, this
      “Minister of Struggle”, in the words of the Memorandum,
      “did not abandon the usual policy of the Ministry of the Interior
      towards the Zemstvo institutions. In the draft of his project, Tolstoi did
      not openly express his idea, actually to abolish the Zemstvos; on the
      pretext of correctly developing the principle of local self-government, he
      sought to preserve their external form, but, at the same time, deprive
      them of all internal substance”. This cunning policy of “the
      fox tail” was still further supplemented and developed in theCouncil of State, with the result that the Zemstvo Regulations of 1890
      “proved to be another half-measure in the history of Zemstvo
      institutions. They did not abolish the Zemstvos, but rendered them
      featureless and colourless; they did not destroy their character as being
      representative of all social-estates, but they gave them a social-estate
      tinge; ... they did not convert the Zemstvo institutions into regular
      organs of the state, ... but increased the power of the governors over
      them ... and increased the governor’s power of veto”. “The
      Regulations of July 12, 1890, were, in keeping with their author’s design,
      a step in the direction of abolishing the Zemstvo institutions, not a
      radical reform of Zemstvo local self-government.”

TheMemorandum goes on to state that this new “half measure”
      did not remove the opposition to the government (it was, of course,
      impossible to remove the opposition to a reactionary government by
      intensifying that reaction), but merely drovecertainof its
      manifestations below the surface. The opposition manifested itself, first,
      in the fact that certain anti-Zemstvo laws—if one may so term
      them— met with resistance and were not carried outde
      facto;it manifested itself, again, in constitutional (or, at all
      events, constitution-flavoured) petitions. Thus, the law of June 10, 1893,
      which tied up the Zemstvo medical service in a tangle of detailed
      regulations, met with the first-mentioned type of opposition. “The
      Zemstvo institutions put up a strenuous resistance to the Ministry of the
      Interior, which had to make a retreat. The Ministry was compelled to
      suspend the introduction of new regulations, already drafted, to reserve
      them for a complete collection of the laws, and to draft a fresh proposal
      on altogether different principles [i.e., principles more acceptable to
      the Zemstvos].” The Assessment of Real Estate Act of June 8,1893, which
      similarly introduced the principle of regulation and restricted the rights
      of the Zemstvos in the assessment of rates, likewise gave rise to
      dissatisfaction, and in many cases “is not being applied in
      practice”. The medical and statistical institutions established by
      the Zemstvos, which have brought considerable benefit to the population
      (as compared with the bureaucracy, of course), proved themselves of
      sufficient strength to paralyse the regulations drawn up in the
      chancelleries of St. Petersburg.

Thesecond form of opposition also found expression in the new Zemstvo, in
      1894, when the Zemstvo petitions to Nicholas II renewed very definitely
      their demand for the extension of local self-government and gave rise to
      the “celebrated” words about senseless dreaming.

Tothe horror of the ministers, the “political tendencies” of
      the Zemstvos did not disappear. The author of the Memorandum cites the
      bitter complaints of the Governor of Tver (from his report of 1898) over
      the “closely knit group of people of liberal views” which had
      concentrated the affairs of the gubernia Zemstvo entirely in its own
      hands. “From the same governor’s report for 1895, it is apparent
      that the struggle against the Zemstvo opposition presents a difficult task
      for the local administration and that the marshals of the nobility, who
      officiate as chairmen at Zemstvo meetings, are sometimes called upon to
      display ’civic courage’ [sic!] in carrying out the instructions
      contained in the confidential circulars of the Ministry of the Interior on
      matters in which the Zemstvo institutions must not interfere." It is
      further related how, at one of the meetings of the assembly, the gubernia
      Marshal of the Nobility turned over his post as chairman to the uyezd [*
      See footnote to p. 36.—Tr.] Marshal (Tver), how the Tver
      Marshal in his turn passed it on to the Novy Torzhok Marshal, and how the
      Novy Torzhok Marshal also fell ill and handed over the post to the
      Staritsa Marshal. And so, even the marshals of the nobility flinch from
      carrying out police functions! “The law of 1890 [laments the author
      of the Memorandum] gave the Zemstvo a social-estate tinge, strengthened
      the government element in the assemblies, and appointed all the uyezd
      marshals of the nobility and rural

      superintendents[44]to the gubernia Zemstvo Assemblies, and the fact that these featureless,
      social-estate, bureaucratic Zemstvos continue nevertheless to betray
      political tendencies, is a matter that should be pondered.... Resistance
      has not been overcome; deep discontent and silent opposition undoubtedly
      exist, and will continue to exist until the Zemstvo representing all
      estates dies." Such is the last word in bureaucratic wisdom. If curtailed
      representation gives rise to discontent, then the abolition of every kind
      of representationwill, by simple human logic, strengthen this discontent and
      opposition. Mr. Witte imagines, however, that if one of the institutions
      that bring at least a particle of discontent to the surface is closed
      down, the discontent will disappear. Perhaps you think that Witte proposes
      something as resolute as the abolition of the Zemstvo? Nothing of the
      kind. Although, for the sake of fine words, he condemns the policy of
      evasion, Witte himself has nothing else but this policy to propose; nor
      can he have, without shedding the skin of minister of the autocratic
      government. Witte mumbles arrant nonsense about a “third
      way"—neither bureaucratic domination nor local self-government, but
      an administrative reform which should “properly organise” the
      “participation of public elements in government
      institutions”. It is easy to emit nonsense of this kind, hut after
      all the experiments with “qualified people” no one will be
      deceived by it; it is only too obvious thatwithout a
      constitutionany “participation of public elements” will
      be a fiction, will mean the subordination of the public (or those
      “called” from the public) to the bureaucracy. While
      criticising a particular measure of the Ministry of the Interior (the
      establishment of Zemstvos in the outlying regions), Witte cannot suggest
      any thing new on the general question he himself raises, but merely warms
      up the old methods—half-measures, pseudo-concessions, and promises
      of numerous benefits, none of which are fulfilled. It cannot he too
      strongly emphasised that on the general question of “the direction
      of domestic policy”, Witte and Goremykin are at one, and that the
      controversy between them is merely a family quarrel, a feud within the
      clan. On the one hand, Witte hastens to declare, “I have never
      proposed nor do I now propose the abolition of Zemstvo institutions or any
      radical change in the present system ... under present conditions there
      can hardly be any talk of abolishing them [the existing Zemstvos
      I”. Witte, “on his part, thinks that with the establishment of
      strong governmental authority in the localities, it will be possible to
      place greater confidence in the Zemstvos”, etc. After establishing a
      strong local bureaucracy to counterbalance local self-government (i.e.,
      rendering local self-government impotent), one can place greater
      “confidence” in it. The same old song! Mr. Witte fears only
      “institutions representing allthe social-estates”; he “did not have in mind the various
      corporations, societies, unions of the social-estates or trade unions and
      did not consider their activities to be dangerous to the
      autocracy”. For example, in regard to the “village
      communes”, Mr. Witte does not doubt in the least that in view of
      their “inertness” they are harmless to the
      autocracy. “The predominance of landownership relations and the
      interests connected with them develop spiritual peculiarities in the rural
      population which render it indifferent to anything outside the politics of
      the village pump.... Our peasants at village meetings concern themselves
      with the apportioning of taxes, ... the distribution of allotments,
      etc. Moreover, they are illiterate or semi-literate—whatsort of
      politics then can they concern themselves with?" Mr. Witte is
      extremely sober-minded, as you see. In regard to the unions of
      social-estates he declares that from the point of view of the danger they
      represent to the central government “their diversity of interests is
      of great importance. The government, by taking advantage of this diversity
      of interests, can always find support in one social-estate and play it off
      against the political claims of the others”. Witte’s programme of
      “properly organised participation of public elements in govern ment
      institutions” is nothing but another of the innumerable attempts of
      the police state to “split” the population.

Onthe other hand, Mr. Goremykin, with whom Mr. Witte enters into such
      heated controversy, himself carries out this very systematic policy of
      disunity and persecution. He argues (in his Memorandum, to which Witte
      rejoins) that it is necessary to institute mew offices to supervise the
      Zemstvo; he is opposed to permitting even simple local congresses of
      Zemstvo civil servants; he stands whole-heartedly for the Regulations of
      1890—that step towards the abolition of the Zemstvos; he fears the
      effort of the Zemstvos to include “tendentious questions” in
      their programme of assessment work; he fears Zemstvo statistics generally;
      he is in favour of taking the elementary schools out of the hands of the
      Zemstvos and placing them under the control of government institutions; he
      argues that the Zemstvos are incapable of handling the questions connected
      with the food supply (Zemstvo workers, don’t you see, encourage
      “exaggerated notions of the extent of the disaster and the needs of
      thefamine-stricken population”!!); and he defends the fixing of limits to
      Zemstvo taxation, “in order to protect landed property from
      excessive increases in Zemstvo taxes”. Witte is entirely right,
      therefore, when he says: “The entire policy of the Ministry of the
      Interior towards the Zemstvos consists in slowly but steadily undermining
      their organs, weakening their significance, and concentrating their
      functions in the hands of government institutions. It may be said without
      the slightest exaggeration that when the ’recently adopted measures’
      referred to in the Memorandum [Goremykin’s] ’regulating the various
      branches of Zemstvo work and administration’ are brought to a successful
      conclusion, we shall have no local self-government whatever. All that will
      be left of the Zemstvo institutions will be a mere idea and a shell
      without any real content.” Consequently, the policy of Goremykin (and more
      so the policy of Sipyagin) and of Witte lead to the same goal, and the
      controversy over the question of the Zemstvo and constitutionalism is, we
      repeat, nothing more than a family quarrel. Lovers’ tiffs are easily made
      up again. The “fight” between Mr. Wit{e and Mr. Goremykin is
      nothing more serious than that. As for our own views on the general
      question of the autocracy and the Zemstvos, it will be more convenient to
      present them in the process of analysing the preface written by
R. N. S.[16]

Mr.R. N. S.’s preface represents much that is of interest. It touches
      upon the broadest questions of political reforms in Russia, the various
      methods by which these reforms can be effected, and the significance of
      the various forces leading to these reforms. On the other hand,
      Mr. R. N. S., who apparently has close relations with liberal circles
      generally, and Zemstvo liberal circles in particular, undoubtedly sounds a
      new note in the chorus of our “underground”
      literature. Therefore, in order to clear up the question of the political
      significance of the Zemstvos in principle and to acquaint ourselves with
      the tendencies and, I shall not say directions,but moods, in the circles close to the liberals, it will be well worth our
      while to deal in detail with this preface and determine whether that which
      is new in it is positive or negative, and to what extent it is positive
      and to what extent negative and why.

Thefundamental feature of R. N. S. ’s views is the following. As can be
      seen from numerous passages of his essay, quoted below, he favours
      peaceful, gradual, and strictly legal development. On the other hand, he
      rebels with all his being against the autocracy and yearns for political
      freedom. But the autocracy is an autocracy precisely because it prohibits
      and persecutesall“development” towards
      freedom. This contradiction permeates the whole of R. N. S. ’s essay and
      renders his argumentation extremely illogical, hesitant, and
      unsound. Constitutionalism can be combined with solicitude for the
      strictly legal development of autocratic Russia only on the premise or, at
      least, on the assumption that the autocratic governmentitselfwill understand, grow weary, yield, etc. And Mr. R. N. S. does, indeed, at
      times fall from the height of his civic indignation to the vulgar
      viewpoint of the most immature liberalism. Thus, he says of himself:
      "... we who regard the struggle for civil liberties waged by
      politically conscious people in Russia today to be their vow of Hannibal,
      a vow as sacred as that taken by the men and women who fought for the
      emancipation of the peasants in the forties " ... and, again,
      “however trying it is to those of us who have taken the ’vow of
      Hannibal’ to fight against the autocracy”, etc. Well said,
      powerfully said! Powerful words like these would have been an
      embellishment to the article, if the same spirit of indomitable and
      irreconcilable struggle ("the vow of Hannibal”) had pervaded it
      throughout. But these powerful words, precisely because they are so
      powerful, sound discordant when accompanied by a note of artificial
      conciliation and pacification, by an attempt to introduce, even with the
      aid of far-fetched interpretations, the conception of peaceful, strictly
      legal development. Mr. R. N. S., unfortunately, evinces more than enough
      such notes and such attempts. He devotes a page and a half, for instance,
      to a detailed “argumentation” of the idea that “the
      policy of the state during the reign of Nicholas II deserveseven
      severer[our italics] condemnation fromthe moral and political points of view than the wicked revision of the
      reforms of Alexander II carried out during the reign of Alexander
      III”. Whyseverercondemnation? It appears that this is
      because Alexander III fought against revolution, while Nicholas II fought
      against “the legal aspirations of Russian society”; the former
      fought against politically conscious forces, the latter against
      “quite peaceful social forces often acting without any clear
      political idea” (“hardly even realising that their purposive
      cultural work was undermining the state system”). To a considerable degree
      this is untrue in point of fact, as we shall show further on. But apart
      from this, one cannot help noting the author’s peculiar line of
      reasoning. He condemns autocracy, but condemns one autocratmorethan another, not because of policy, for that has remained unchanged, but
      because he (allegedly) has no “hotheads” to contend with,
      such as “naturally” call forth sharp resistance, and,
      consequently, he has no occasion for persecutions. Is not such an argument
      an obvious concession to the loyal and humble contention that Our Father
      the Tsar need not fear to call together his beloved people because they
      have never dreamed of anything beyond the bounds of peaceful strivings and
      strict legality? We are not surprised to find such a “train of
      thought” (or train of lies) in the works of Mr. Witte, who writes in
      his Memorandum: “One would suppose, when there are no political
      parties and there is no revolution, and when the rights of the supreme
      authority are not being challenged, that the administration should not be
      contraposed to the people or

      society...",[17]etc. We are not surprised to meet with such arguments in the writings of
      Mr. Chicherin, who, in the Memorandum presented to Count Milyutin after
      March 1,1881, declared that “the authorities must first of all
      display their energy and show that they have not lowered their flag in the
      face of danger”, that “the monarchical system is compatible
      with free institutions only when the latter are the fruit of peaceful
      development and the calm initiative of the supreme authority
      itself”, and who recommended theestablishment of a “strong and liberal” government functioning
      with the aid of a “legislative organ strengthened and renovated by
      the elective

      element”.[18]Now, it would be quite natural for such a
      Mr. Chicherin to acknowledge that the policy of Nicholas II deserves
      greater condemnation,becauseunder his rule peaceful development
      and the calm initiative of the supreme authority itselfcould have
      ledto free institutions. But is it natural and decent to hear such
      reasoning from a man who took the vow of Hannibal to struggle?

Mr.R. N. S. is wrong in point of fact. “Now,” he says, comparing
      the present reign with the preceding one, “no one thinks seriously
      of the violent overthrow wishfully imagined by the adherents of Narodnaya
      Volya.”Parlez pour vous, monsieur!Speak only for yourself. We
      know quite definitely that the revolutionary movement in Russia, far from
      having died out or subsided in the present as compared with the previous
      reign, has, on the contrary, revived and become many times stronger. What
      kind of “revolutionary” movement would it be, if none of the
      participants thought seriously of a violent change? The objection may be
      raised that in the quoted lines Mr. R. N. S. has in mind, not violent
      revolution in general, but a specific “Narodnaya Volya”
      revolution, i.e., a revolution that will be both political and social at
      the same time, a revolution that will lead, not only to the overthrow of
      the autocracy, but to the seizure of power. Such an objection, however,
      would be groundless, first, because to the autocracy as such (i.e., to the
      autocratic government and not to the “bourgeoisie” or
      “society”) it is not importantfor what reasonpeople want
      to overthrow it; important isthe factthat they want to
      overthrow it. Secondly, at the beginning of the reign of Alexander III,
      the Narodnaya Volya adherents “presented” to the government
      the very alternative that Social-Democracy now presents to Nicholas
      II—either revolutionary struggle or the renunciation of autocratic
      power. (See the Letter of the Executive Committee of Narodnaya Volya to
      Alexander III, dated March 10, 1881, which put forward two conditions: (1)
      a general amnesty for all political offenders, and (2) theconvening of an assembly of representatives of the entire Russian people
      on the basis of universal suffrage, freedom of the press, speech, and
      assembly.) Mr. R. N. S. himself knows perfectly well that many people, not
      only among the intelligentsia, but also among the working class,
      “think seriously” about a violent revolution; see page xxxix
      et seq. of his essay, where reference is made to “revolutionary
      Social-Democracy”, which possesses a “mass basis and
      intellectual forces”, which is advancing towards “the decisive
      political struggle”, towards the “sanguinary struggle of
      revolutionary Russia against the absolutist-bureaucratic
      régime” (p. xli).There is not the slightest doubt, therefore,
      that Mr. R. N. S. ’s “loyal speeches” constitute a special
      method, an attempt to influence the government (or “public opinion”)
      by demonstrating his (or other people’s) modesty.

Mr.R. N. S., by the way, thinks that the term “struggle” may
      be given a very wide interpretation. “The abolition of the Zemstvo,”
      he writes, “will place a trump card in the hands of revolutionary
      propagandists—we say this quite objectively [sic!],
      without, on the one hand, experiencing repulsion against what is usually
      termed revolutionary action, or, on the other, being carried away with
      infatuation or admiration for this form [sic!] of struggle for
      political and social progress." This is a most remarkable tirade. If we
      remove the quasi-scientific formula, this inappropriate parading of
      “objectivity” (since the author himself mentions his
      preference for one or another form of activity or of struggle, the
      protestation of his objectivity rates in value with the statement, two and
      two equal one stearin candle), we shall find the hoary argument: Gentlemen
      of the government, you may believe me when I begin to scare you with
      revolution, because my heart is not in it. His reference to objectivity is
      nothing more nor less than a fig-leaf intended to conceal subjective
      antipathy to revolution and revolutionary activity. And
      Mr. R. N. S. stands in need of a fig-leaf, because such antipathy is
      totally incompatible with the vow of Hannibal.

Bythe way, are we not making a mistake about this Hannibal? Did he really take
      a vow to struggle against the Romans, or only to fight for the progress of
      Carthage, which progress, of course, in the final analysis, would be to
      the injuryof Rome? Can the term “struggle” be understood other wise than
      in its “narrow” meaning? Mr. R.N.S.thinks it can. A comparison of
      the vow of Hannibal with the above-mentioned tirade yields the conclusion
      that struggle against the autocracy manifests itself in various
      “forms”: one form is the revolutionary, illegal struggle;
      another form is “struggle for political and social progress”
      in general, in other words peaceful legal activity, which disseminates
      culture within the limits permitted by the autocracy. We do not doubt in
      the least that it is possible even under the autocracy to carry on legal
      activity which promotes Russian progress, in some cases fairly rapid
      technological progress, in a few cases insignificant social progress, and,
      in exceptional cases, political progress to a very slight extent. We may
      argue about the magnitude of this slight progress and the extent to which
      it is possible, the extent to which isolated cases of such progress are
      capable of paralysing the mass political demoralisation which the
      autocracy is constantly sowing among the population everywhere. But to
      include, even indirectly, peaceful legal activity in the conception of
      struggle against the autocracy means to facilitate this work of
      demoralisation and to weaken the as it is infinitely weak consciousness of
      the Russian man in the street of his responsibility as citizen foreverythingthe government does.

Unfortunately,Mr. R. N. S. is not alone among the illegal writers who
      seek to obliterate the difference between revolutionary struggle and
      peaceful uplift activities. He has a predecessor in the person of B. M.,
      author of the article “Our Reality”, published in the
      celebrated“Separate Supplement” to Rabochaya

      Mysl[45](September 1899). In his controversy with the Social-Democratic
      revolutionaries, Mr. B. M. wrote: “The struggle for the Zemstvo and
      for municipal self-government, the struggle for public schools, the
      struggle for public courts, the struggle for public aid to the famine-
      stricken population, etc., all represent the struggle against the
      autocracy.... This social struggle, which for some unexplained reason
      fails to attract the favourable interest of many Russian revolutionary
      writers, is, as we have seen, being waged by Russian society, and not only
      since yesterday.... The question now is how these separate social strata
      ... can wage the struggle against the autocracy most effectively....The principal question for us is how this social struggle against the
      autocracy should be waged by our workers, whose movement our
      revolutionaries regard as the best means of overthrowing the
      autocracy” (pp. 8-9). As can be seen, Mr. R. M. does not bother to
      conceal his antipathy towards the revolutionaries; he openly characterises
      legal opposition and peaceful activity as struggle against the autocracy,
      and the most important question for him is how the workers should conductthisstruggle. Mr. R. N. S. is not nearly so crude and open, but
      the kinship between the political trends of this liberal and of the ardent
      worshipper of the labour movement pure and simple, is very definitely

      apparent.[19]

Withrespect to Mr. R. N. S. ’s “objectivity”, we must say
      that he sometimes simply casts it aside. He is “objective”
      when he speaks of the working-class movement, of its organic growth, of
      the future inevitable struggles between revolutionary Social-Democracy and
      the autocracy, and when he states that the abolition of the Zemstvos will
      inevitably force the liberals to organise an illegal party. All this is
      set forth in a very business-like and sober manner, so sober indeed that
      one can only rejoice that the working-class movement in Russia is so well
      understood in liberal circles. But when, instead of fighting the enemy,
      Mr. R. N. S. begins to talk about the possibility of
      “submission” on the part of the enemy, he forfeits his
      “objectivity”, gives expression to his real sentiments, and
      even passes from the indicative mood to the imperative.

“Onlyin the event of people being found among those in power courageous
      enough to submit to history and to compel the autocrat tosubmit to it, will the final and bloody struggle between revolutionary
      Russia and the autocratic-bureaucratic régime be avoided.... No
      doubt there are men among the higher bureaucracy who do not sympathise
      with the reactionary policy.... These men, the only persons having access
      to the throne, never dare to express their convictions openly.... Perhaps
      the enormous shadow of the inevitable, historic day of retribution, the
      shadow of great events, will cause the government circles to waver and
      will destroy the iron system of reactionary policy while there is yet
      time. Comparatively little is required for this now.... Perhaps it [the
      government] will realise, before it is too late, the fatal danger of
      protecting the autocratic régime at all costs. Perhaps even before
      it has to face revolution, it will grow weary of its struggle against the
      natural and historically necessary development of freedom, and will waver
      in its ’irreconcilable’ policy. If it ceases to be consistent in its
      struggle against freedom, it will be obliged to open the door wider and
      wider for it. It may be ... no, not only may be, butso shall it
      be!”  (Author’s italics).

“Onlyin the event of people being found among those in power courageous
      enough to submit to history and to compel the autocrat tosubmit to it, will the final and bloody struggle between revolutionary
      Russia and the autocratic-bureaucratic régime be avoided.... No
      doubt there are men among the higher bureaucracy who do not sympathise
      with the reactionary policy.... These men, the only persons having access
      to the throne, never dare to express their convictions openly.... Perhaps
      the enormous shadow of the inevitable, historic day of retribution, the
      shadow of great events, will cause the government circles to waver and
      will destroy the iron system of reactionary policy while there is yet
      time. Comparatively little is required for this now.... Perhaps it [the
      government] will realise, before it is too late, the fatal danger of
      protecting the autocratic régime at all costs. Perhaps even before
      it has to face revolution, it will grow weary of its struggle against the
      natural and historically necessary development of freedom, and will waver
      in its ’irreconcilable’ policy. If it ceases to be consistent in its
      struggle against freedom, it will be obliged to open the door wider and
      wider for it. It may be ... no, not only may be, butso shall it
      be!”  (Author’s italics).

Amen!is all that we need add to this well-intentioned and lofty
      monologue. Our Hannibal makes such rapid progress that be now appears
      before us in a third form. The first was the struggle against the
      autocracy, the second—the spreading of culture, the
      third—appeals to the enemy to submit and attempts to frighten him
      with a “shadow”. How frightful! We quite agree with our
      respected Mr. R. N. S. that the sanctimonious hypocrites of the Russian
      Government are sooner frightened by “shadows” than by anything
      else on earth. Immediately prior to conjuring up shadows, our author, in
      referring to the growth of the revolutionary forces and to the impending
      revolutionary outbreak, exclaimed: “We foresee with profound sorrow
      the horrible price in people and in cultural forces that will have to be
      paid for this madly aggressive, conservative policy which has neither
      political sense nor a shadow of moral justification.” What a bottomless
      pit of doctrinairism and unction is revealed by this conclusion to an
      argument about the revolutionary out break! The author fails completely to
      understand the enormous historical significance it would have, if, for
      once at least, the people of Russia taught the government a good
      lesson. Instead of showing the “horrible price” the people
      have paid and are still paying to absolutism, in order to arouse their
      hatred and indignation and instil in them a readiness and a passion for
      struggle, you talk aboutfuturesacrifices in order to frighten
      people awayfrom the struggle. My good gentlemen! It would be far better for you to
      refrain altogether from talking about the “revolutionary
      outbreak” than to ruin your reasoning with such a
      finale. Apparently, you do not wish tocreate“great
      events”, you merely want to talk about “the shadow of great
      events”, and then only with “persons having access to the
      throne”.

Ourlegal press, as we know, is chock-full of such talk with shadows and
      about shadows; and in order to give substance to the shadows, it has
      become fashionable to refer to the “great reforms” and to sing
      to them hallelujahs full of conventional lies. An author writing under the
      surveillance of the censor may sometimes be forgiven such lies, since
      otherwise he would never be able to express his striving for political
      reforms. But no censorship hovered over Mr. H. N. S. He writes, “The
      great reforms were not devised for the greater triumph of the
      bureaucracy.” How evasive this apologetic phrase is.By whom“devised”? By Herzen, Chernyshevsky, Unkovsky, and those who marched
      with them? But these people demanded ever so much more than was effected
      by the “reforms”, and because of this they were persecuted by
      the government that introduced the “great” reforms. By the
      government and by those who followed it blindly singing its praises and
      snarling at the “hot heads”? But the government strove by every
      means in its power to concede as little as possible, and to curtail the
      democratic demandspreciselyfor the “greater triumph of
      the bureaucracy”. Mr. B. N. S. is well aware of these historical
      facts, and he obscures them only for the reason that they entirely refute
      his smug theory of the possible “submission” of the
      autocrat. There is no place for submissiveness in politics, and
      the time-honoured police method ofdivide et impera, divide and
      rule, yield the unimportant in order ’to preserve the essential, give with
      one hand and take back with the other, can be mistaken for submission only
      out of unbounded simplicity (both sacred and sly simplicity). ". .When the government of Alexander II devised and
      introduced the ’great reforms’, it did not at the same time deliberately
      set itself the aim of cutting off imperatively all the Russian people’s
      legal roads to political liberty, it did not weigh its every step and
      every paragraph of thelaw with this end in view." This isuntrue!The government of
      Alexander II, both in “devising” the reforms and in introducing them, set out from the very beginning to reject the demands for
      political freedom then put forward. From the beginning to the end it cut
      off every legal road to liberty; for it answered even simple appeals with
      repressions,itnever even permitted liberty to be
      discussed freely. Suffice it to recall the facts mentioned in Witte’s
      Memorandum, quoted above, to refute Mr. R. N. S.’s paeans of
      praise. Concerning the persons in the government of Alexander II, Witte
      expresses himself, for example, as follows: “It must be observed
      that the prominent statesmen of the sixties, whose celebrated names will
      be preserved by a grateful posterity, in their time did more that is great
      than anything their successors may have done; they toiled at the
      renovation of our state and social system from sincere conviction, not to
      frustrate the strivings of their ruler, but out of unbounded loyalty to
      him” (p. 67 of the Memorandum). What is true is true—from
      sincere conviction, out of unbounded loyalty to the ruler at the head of
      the police gang....

Afterthis we are not surprised that Mr. II. N. S. says very little about
      the most important question of the role of the Zemstvos in the struggle
      for political liberty. Apart from the usual references to the
      “practical” and “cultural” work of the Zemstvo, he
      mentions in passing its “educational-political significance”;
      he says that the “Zemstvo has political significance”, that
      the Zemstvo, as Mr. Witte clearly sees, “is dangerous [to the
      present system] only by virtue of the historical tendency of its
      development—as the embryo of a constitution”. And, concluding
      these seem ingly casual remarks, comes the following attack upon
      revolutionaries: “We value Mr. Witte’s work, not only for the truth
      it tells about the autocracy, but also as a valuable political testimonial
      to the Zemstvo granted by the bureaucracy itself. This testimonial is an
      excellent reply to all those who, being devoid of political education or
      carried away by revolutionary phrases [sic!], have refused to see
      the enormous political significance of the Russian Zemstvos and their
      legal cultural activity." Who has revealed a lack of education? Who is
      carried away? Where and when? With whom does Mr. R. N. S. disagree? And
      why? To these questionsno reply is forthcoming, and our author’s attack is nothing but an
      expression of his antipathy towards revolutionaries, which we know from
      other passages in his essay. Matters are not clarified by the still
      stranger comment:

      "By these words we do not desire I?!] to offend revolutionaries whose
      moral courage in the struggle against tyranny cannot be too highly
      estimated.”  Wherefore this remark? What connection is there between moral
      courage and inability to appreciate the Zemstvos? Mr. H. N. S. has indeed
      fallen out of the frying-pan into the fire. First he
      “offended” the revolutionaries by making an unsupported and
      “anonymous” (i.e., not known against whom levelled) charge of
      ignorance and phrase-mongering, and now he commits a fresh
      “offence” against them by assuming that they can be induced to
      swallow the charge of ignorance if the pill is sweetened by recognition of
      their moral courage. To complete the confusion, Mr. H. N. S. contradicts
      himself by declaring, in chorus, as it were, with those who are
      “carried away by revolutionary phrases”, that “the
      modern Russian Zemstvo ... is not a political mag nitude that could
      impress or overawe anyone by its own direct power.... It can barely
      maintain its own position”.... “Only in the remote future and
      only as a result of the cultural development of the whole country could
      such institutions [as the Zemstvo] ... become a menace to this
      [absolutist] system.”

Letus, however, try to analyse the issue on which Mr.  R. N. S. speaks so
      angrily and emptily. The facts we have cited above show that the
      “political significance” of the Zemstvos, i.e., their
      significance as a factor in the struggle for political freedom, lies
      principally in the following: first, these bodies of representatives of
      our propertied classes (particularly the landed aristocracy) forever
      contrapose elected institutions to the bureaucracy, give rise to constant
      conflicts between them, expose at every step the reactionary character of
      the irresponsible tsarist officialdom, and foster discontent and
      opposition to the autocraticgovernment.[20]Secondly, the Zemstvos, attached to the bureaucratic chariot like a
      superfluous fifth wheel, strive to consolidate their position, to increase
      their significance, and to obtain a constitution by
      petitioning—“unconsciously march to wards it”, as Witte
      himself puts the matter. For that reason they are unsuitable as allies of
      the government in its fight against the revolutionaries; they maintain a
      benevolent neutrality towards the latter and render them undoubted, if
      indirect, service by causing the government to waver in its measures of
      repression at critical moments. Of course, institutions, which hitherto
      have proved that they are, at best, capable of making only liberal
      petitions and maintaining benevolent neutrality, cannot be regarded as an
      “important”, or to any degree an independent, factor in the
      political struggle; but it cannot be denied that the Zemst vos represent
      one of theauxiliaryfactors in the struggle. In this sense we
      are even prepared, if you will, to regard the Zemstvo as a piece of
      constitution. Perhaps the reader will say, “Then you agree with
      Mr. R. N. S., who does not claim any more for them?” Not at all. It is
      only here that our difference with him begins.

Letus admit for the sake of argument .that the Zemstvo is a piece of
      constitution. But it is precisely such a piece that was usedto
      decoyRussian “society” away from a constitution. It is
      precisely such a relatively unimportant position that the autocracy has
      yielded to growing democracy in order to retain its hold on its principal
      positions, in order to divide and disunite those who demanded political
      reforms. We have seen how this policy of disuniting on the basis of
      “confidence” in the Zemstvo (“the embryo of a
      constitution”) succeeded in the sixties and in the years 1880-81. The
      question of the relation of the Zemstvos to politi8cal freedom is a
      particular case of the general question of the relation of reforms to
      revolution. This particular case serves to illustrate the
      narrow-mindedness and stupidity of the fashionable theory of

      Bernstein,[46]which substitutes reforms for revolutionary struggle and declares (e.g.,through the mouth of Mr. Berdyaev) that the “principle of progress
      is that the better things are, the better”. This principle in its
      general form is as untrue as its reverse that the worse things are, the
      better. Revolutionaries, of course, will never reject the struggle for
      reforms, the struggle to capture even minor and unimportant enemy
      positions,ifthese will serve to strengthen the attack and help
      to achieve full victory. But they will never forget that sometimes the
      enemy himself surrenders a certain position in order to disunite the
      attacking party and thus to defeat it more easily. They will never forget
      that only by constantly having the “ultimate aim   in view, only by
      appraising every step of the “movement” and every reform from
      the point of view of the general revolutionary struggle, is it possible to
      guard the movement against false steps and shameful mistakes.

Itis this aspect of the question—the significance of the Zemstvo as
      an instrument forstrengtheningthe autocracy through
      half-concessions, as a means of bringing over a certain section of the
      liberals to the side of the autocracy— that Mr. R. N. S. has
      completely failed to understand. He has preferred to invent for his own
      use a doctrinaire scheme by which the Zemstvos and the constitution are
      connected by the straight-line “formula”, the better things
      are, the better. “If you first abolish the Zemstvos in Russia,” he
      says, addressing himself to Witte, “and then increase the rights of
      the individual, you will lose the good opportunity of giving the country a
      moderate constitution growing historically out of local self-government
      with a social-estate appearance. At all events you will render the cause
      of conservatism a distinct disservice.” What a beautiful and harmonious
      conception! Local self-government with a social-estate tinge—a wise
      conservative, having access to the throne—a moderate
      constitution. The unfortunate thing about it is that in actual practice,
      the wise conservatives have on more than one occasion, thanks’ to the
      Zemstvos, found “good opportunities” towithholdthe
      constitution from the country.

Mr.R. N. S.’s peaceful “conception” had its effect also on
      the slogan with which he concludes his essay and Which is printed in the
      manner of a slogan, as a separate line andin heavy type: “Rights, and an Authoritative All-Russian Zemstvo!”
      It must be frankly acknowledged’ that this is the same sort of indecent
      flirting with the political prejudices of the broad masses of Russian
      liberals asRabochaya Mysl’sflirting with the political
      prejudices of the broad masses of the workers. We are duty-bound to raise
      a protest in the first as in the second case against such flirting. It is
      prejudice to believe that the government of Alexander II did not cut off
      the legal road to liberty, that the Zemstvos provide a good opportunity
      for granting a moderate constitution to the country, and that the slogan,
      “Rights, and an Authoritative Zemstvo” can serve as the banner
      of, we shall not say the revolutionary, but even the constitutional,
      movement. This is not a banner that can serve to distinguish. enemies from
      allies, or help to direct and guide the movement; it is but a rag that can
      only help the most unreliable characters to creep into the movement, and
      assist the government to make still another attempt to come off with
      high-sounding promises and indecisive reforms. One need not be a prophet
      to be able to prophesy this. Our revolutionary movement will reach its
      apogee, the liberal ferment in society will increase tenfold, and other
      Loris-Melikovs and Ignatyevs will appear in the government and inscribe on
      their banner: “Rights, and an Authoritative Zemstvo”. But if
      it came to pass, it would be the most unfavourable outcome for Russia and
      the most favour able for the government. If any considerable section of
      the liberals put their faith in that banner, and, allowing themselves to
      be carried away by it, attack the revolutionary “hotheads” in
      the rear, the latter may find themselves cut off, and the government will
      try to restrict itself to a minimum of concessions limited to something in
      the nature of an advisory and aristocratic constitution. Whether this
      attempt will be successful or not, depends upon the outcome of the
      decisive struggle between the revolutionary proletariat and the
      government; but of one thing we may be certain—the liberals will be
      betrayed. With the aid of slogans like those advanced by
      Mr. R. N. S. (“Authoritative Zemstvo”, etc.), the government
      will decoy them like puppies away from the revolutionaries, only to take
      them by the scruff of the neck and thrash them with the whipof reaction. And when that happens, gentlemen, we will not forget to say,Serves you right!

Why,instead of a demand for the abolition of absolutism, is such a
      moderate and chastened wish put forward as ultimate slogan? First, for the
      sake of the philistine doctrinairism that desires to render a
      “service to conservatism” and believes that the government
      will be softened by such moderation and be rendered
      “submissive” by it. Secondly, in order to “unite the
      liberals”. Indeed, the slogan “Rights, and an Authoritative
      Zemstvo” can perhaps serve to uniteallliberals in the
      same way as (in the opinion of the “Economists”) the slogan
      “add a kopek to each

      ruble”[21]will uniteallthe
      workers. But will notsuchunity be a loss rather than a gain?
      Unity is an advantage when it raises those who are united to the level of
      the class-conscious and decisive programme of the unifying force. Unity is
      a disadvantage when it lowers the unifying force to the level of the
      prejudices of the masses. Among Russian liberals there is undoubtedly a
      widespread prejudice that the Zemstvo is indeed the “embryo of a

      constitution”,[22]the “natural”, peaceful, and gradual growth of which is
      accidentally retardedby the intrigues of certain immoral time-servers, that only a few
      petitions are necessary in order to bring the autocrat to
      “submission”, that legal cultural work generally and Zemstvo
      work in particular have “considerable political significance”,
      relieving those who mouth verbal hostility to the autocracy of the
      obligation actively to support the revolutionary struggle against the
      autocracy in one way or another, and so forth, and so on. Undoubtedly, it
      would be very useful and desirable to unite the liberals; but the unity
      must be one whose purpose is to combat outworn prejudices and not to play
      up to them, to raise the general level of our political development (or
      rather underdevelopment), and not to sanction it—in a word, it must
      be a unity for the purpose of supporting the illegal struggle and not for
      the purpose of opportunistic phrase-mongering about the great political
      significance of legal activity. If there can be no justification for
      issuing to the workers the political slogan “Freedom to
      Strike”, etc., then, by the same token, there can be no
      justification for issuing to the liberals the slogan “An
      Authoritative Zemstvo”.Under the autocracyevery kind of
      Zemstvo, however “authoritative” it may be, will inevitably be
      a deformity, incapable of development, whileunderaconstitutionthe Zemstvo will immediately lose its present-day
      “political” significance.

Theunification of liberals is possible in two ways: by forming an
      independent liberal party (illegal, of course), or by organising liberal
      aid for revolutionaries. Mr. R. N. S. himself points to the first form,
      but ... if what he says in this connection is to be taken as a genuine
      expression of the views and prospects of liberalism, then it does not give
      grounds for very great optimism. He writes: “Without a Zemstvo, the
      Zemstvo liberals will have to form a liberal party or abandon the
      historical stage as an organised force. We are convinced that the
      organisation of liberals in an illegal party, even if its programme and
      its methods are very moderate, will be the inevitable result of the
      abolition of the Zemstvo." If that is the case, we shall have to wait a
      long time, for even Witte does not wish to abolish the Zemstvos, and as
      for the Russian Government it is very much concerned with preserving their
      outward form, even if their content is completely eliminated. That a
      liberalparty will be a very moderate one is quite natural, and it is useless to
      expect that the movement among the bourgeoisie (for only on that movement
      can a liberal party be based) will give rise to any other. But what should
      be the activities and the “methods” of such a party?
      Mr. R. N. S. does not explain. He says: “An illegal liberal party,
      being an organisation consisting of the most moderate and least mobile of
      the opposition elements, cannot by itself develop a particularly
      extensive, or particularly intensive, activity....” We think, however,
      that in a certain sphere, although limited by local and above all by
      Zemstvo interests, the liberal party could very well develop an extensive
      and intensive activity, such as the organisation of political
      exposures.... “But with such activity on the part of other parties,
      especially the Social-Democratic or working-class party, the liberal
      party, even without entering into any direct agreement with the
      Social-Democrats, can become a highly important factor....” Very true; and
      the reader will naturally expect that the author would, at least in
      general outline, describe the work of this “factor”. But
      instead of doing so, Mr. R. N. S. describes the growth of revolutionary
      Social-Democracy and concludes: “With the existence of a pronounced
      political movement ... a liberal opposition, if it is in the least
      organised, can play an important political role; with proper tactics, a
      moderate party always stands to gain from an accentuated struggle between
      extreme social elements....” That is all! The “role” of the
      “factor” (which has already managed to convert it self from a
      party into an “opposition”) is to “take advantage” of
      the growing acuteness of the struggle. Mention is made of what the
      liberals stand to gain, but not a word is said about the liberals taking
      part in the struggle. The slip of the tongue, one may say, is
      providential....

TheRussian Social-Democrats never closed their eyes to the fact that the
      political liberties for which they are first and foremost fighting will
      benefitprimarilythe bourgeoisie. Only a socialist steeped in
      the worst prejudices of utopianism, or reactionary Narodism, would for
      that reason object to carrying on the struggle against the autocracy. The
      bourgeoisie will benefit by these liberties and rest onitslaurels—the proletariat, however, must have, freedomin order to develop the struggle for socialism to the utmost. And
      Social-Democracy will persistently carry on the struggle for liberation,
      regardless of the attitude of the various strata of the bourgeoisie
      towards it. In the interests of the political struggle, we must support
      every opposition to the oppressive autocracy, no matter on what grounds
      and in what social stratum it manifests itself. For that reason, we are by
      no means indifferent to the opposition expressed by our liberal
      bourgeoisie in general, and by our Zemstvo liberals in particular. If the
      liberals succeed in organising themselves in an illegal party, so much the
      better. We shall welcome the growth of political consciousness among the
      propertied classes; we will support their demands, we will endeavour to
      work so that the activities of the liberals and the Social-Democrats
      mutually supplement each

      other.[23]But even if they fail to do so (which is
      more probable), we shall not give them up as lost, we will endeavour to
      strength en contacts with individual liberals, acquaint them with our
      movement, support them by exposing in the labour press all the despicable
      acts of the government and the local authorities, and try to induce them
      to support the revolutionaries. Such an exchange of services between
      liberals and Social-Democrats is already proceeding; it must be extended
      and made permanent. But while always ready to carry on this exchange of
      services, we will never, under any circumstances, cease to carry on a
      determined struggle against the illusions that are so widespread in the
      politically undeveloped Russian society generally and among Russian
      liberals in particular. Paraphrasing the celebrated statement of Marx in
      regard to the Revolution of i848, we may say of the Russian revolutionary
      movement that its progress lies, not so much in the achievement of any
      positive gains, as in emancipation from harmful

      illusions.[47]We have emancipated ourselves from the illusions of anarchism and Narodnik
      socialism, from contempt for politics, from the belief in the
      exceptionalist development of Russia, from the conviction that the people
      are ready for revolution, and from the theory of the seizure of power and
      the duel-like combat between the autocracy and the heroic intelligentsia.

Itis time our liberals emancipated themselves from the illusion,
      theoretically untenable, one might assume, yet very tenacious in practice,
      that it is still possible to hold parley with the Russian autocracy, that
      some kind of Zemstvo is the embryo of a constitution, and that the sincere
      adherents of the constitution can fulfil their vow of Hannibal by patient
      legal activity and by patient appeals to the enemy to turn submissive.

[1]I refer, of course, only to that “antidote”—by no means the
      sole or even the most “powerful” one—which is
      represented by the press.
    —Lenin

[2]The Autocracy and the Zemstvo. A Confidential Memorandum by the
      Minister of Finance, S. Y. Witte, with a preface arid annotations by
      R.N.S. Published byZarya.[48]Stuttgart, Verlag von J.H. W. Dietz
      Nachf., 1901, pp. xliv and 212.
    —Lenin

[3]Dragomanov, “Zemstvo Liberalism in Russia”, p.4.Witte very often fails to mention that he has quoted from Dragomanov (cf.,
      for example, pp. 36-37 of the Memorandum and pp. 55-56 of the
      above-mentioned article), although he refers to him in some other
      passages.
    —Lenin

[4]Gubernia, uyezd, volost—Russian administrative-territorial
      units. The largest of these was the gubernia, which had its subdi visions in
      uyezds, which in turn were subdivided into volosts. This system of
      districting continued under the Soviet power until the introduction of the
      new system of administrative-territorial division of the country in
      1929-30.—Tr.

[5]Dragomanov, op. cit., p. 5. Cited in an abridged form in the Memorandum,
      p. 64, with a reference, not to Dragomanov, but toKolokol,
      No. 126, and toRevue des deux Mondes, June 15,

      1862.[49]—Lenin

[6]Incidentally, one of the initiators of this petition, Nikolai Alexandrovich
      Bakunin, a younger brother of the famed M. A. Bakunin, passed away recently
      (April 19, this year, i.e., 1901) at his estate in Tver Gubernia. Nikolai
      Alexandrovich signed the petition of 1862, together with his younger brother
      Alexei and other mediators. This petition, relates the author of an item on
      N.A. Bakunin, published in one of our newspapers, called down punishment upon
      its signatories. After a year’s confinement in the Fortress of Peter and
      Paul the signatories were released, but Nikolai Alexandrovich and his brother
      Alexei were not pardoned (they had not signed the petition for pardon) and as
      a consequence, were prohibited from holding public office. After that,
      N. A. Bakunin never made a public appearance, nor could he speak publicly
      again.... In this manner our government retaliated against the lawful
      actions of the landed nobility at the time of “the great reforms”! And
      this was in 1862, prior to the Polish rebellion, at a time when even

      Katkov[50]proposed the convocation of a Zemsky Sobor.[Zemsky Sober(National Assembly) andNational Dumawere current, in Russian literature of the sixties
      of the past century as terms denoting national representative
      assembly.—Tr.]
    —Lenin

[7]Cf. V. Burtsev,One Hundred Years, p. 39.
    —Lenin

[8]L. Panteleyev, “Reminiscences of the Sixties”, in the
      collection of essays,At the Glorious Post(p.

      315).[51]This minor piece contains a number of very interesting facts on
      the revolutionary unrest in 1861-62 and on the police
      reaction.... “Early in 1862 the social atmosphere was extremely
      tense; the slightest incident could have given a strong impetus to the
      course of events in either direction. The impetus was given by the great
      conflagrations that occurred in St. Petersburg in May of that year.” These
      fires first broke out on May16and raged with particular
      fierceness on May 22 and 23—on the latter date there were five
      conflagrations. On May 28, the Apraksin Place [a market-place in
      St. Petersburg named after its owner, Count Apraksin.—Tr.]
      caught fire and a wide area surrounding it was laid waste. The populace
      attributed these fires to the students, and the rumours were taken up by
      the newspapers. The manifestoTo Young Russia, proclaiming a
      bloody war against the whole existing system and justifying every means to
      this end, was taken to confirm the rumours of incendiarism. “After
      May 28, something in the nature of martial law was proclaimed in
      St. Petersburg.” A special committee was established with powers to takeextraordinarymeasures for the protection of the capital. The
      city was divided into three zones, each under the control of a military
      governor. A field court martial was set up to try those accused of
      incendiarism.Sovremennik[52]andRusskoye

      Slovo[53]were suspended for eight months;Dyen,[54]published by Aksakov, was
      suppressed. Stringent temporary press regulations (sanctioned on May 12,i.e., before the fires broke out;consequently,“the
      progress of events”was towards reaction and was unrelated to
      the fires, the opinion of Mr. Panteleyev notwithstanding) and regulations
      for the surveillance of printing locations were resorted to. Numerous
      political arrests were made (Chernyshevsky and N. Serno-Solovyevich,
      Rymarenko, and others); Sunday schools and public reading-rooms were
      closed; permits for public lectures in St. Petersburgbecame more difficult to obtain; and the second department of the Literary

      Fund[55]and even the Chess

      Club[56]were closed down.

TheCommittee of Inquiry failed to establish any connection between the
      fires and politics. One of its members, Stolbovsky, told Mr. Panteleyev
      that in the Committee “he succeeded in exposing the principal false
      witnesses who, it seems, were the cat’s-paw of police agents”
      (325-26). Thus, there are weighty grounds for believing that the rumours
      aboutstudent incendiarism were circulated by the police.The
      despicable exploitation of the ignorance of the people for the purpose of
      slandering revolutionaries and protesters was, therefore, in full swing at
      the height of the “epoch of great reforms”.
    —Lenin

[9]Interpolations in square brackets (within passages quoted by Lenin) have
      been introduced by Lenin, unless otherwise indicated.—Tr.

[10]We quote from the German translation of Dragomanov’s edition of the
      correspondence of K. D. Kavelin and I. S. Turgenev with A. I. Herzen:Bibliothek russiseher Denkwürdigkeiten, herausgegeben von
      Th. Schiemann, Stuttgart, 1894, Bd. 4, S. 65-66.
    —Lenin

[11]There is “no doubt” that the author of the Memorandum in
      employing the language of Leroy-Beaulien, commits the usual bureaucratic
      exaggeration. There is “no doubt” that neither Lanskoi nor
      Milyutin had anything very definite in mind, and it is ridiculous to
      regard the evasive phrases of Milyutin (“in principle in favour of
      the Constitution, but regards its introduction as premature”) as a
      “first step”.
    —Lenin

[12]A letter written by Kavelin to relatives in f 865, in which he
      refers to the petition of the Moscow nobility for “the
      convocation of a general assembly of representatives of the land of Russia
      to discuss needs common to the whole state”.
    —Lenin

[13]Dragomanov said in all justice: “As a matter of fact, liberalism In
      Russia cannot employ absolutely ’peaceful means’, because every
      declaration in favour of changing the higher administration is prohibited
      by law. The Zemstvo liberals should have stepped resolutely over the
      bounds of this prohibition, and in this way at least have demonstrated
      their strength to both the government and the terrorists. As the Zemstvo
      liberals did not demonstrate this strength, they lived to see the day when
      the government revealed its intention to destroy the already truncated
      Zemstvo institutions” (ibid., pp. 41-42).
    —Lenin

[14]Poryadok(Order);Strana(The Country);Golos(The Voice).—Ed.

[15]As we have seen the author of the Memorandum most care fully copies from
      illegal pamphlets and admits that “the underground press and the
      literary works published abroad quite correctly judged the position on this
      question from their point of view” (p. 91). The only thing
      original produced by this learned Russian “political scientist”
      is a certain amount of raw material; he has had to borrow all the fundamental
      points of view regarding political questions in
      Russia from underground literature.
    —Lenin

[16]Anom de plumeused by Mr. Struve. (Author’s comment
      to the 1907 edition.—Ed.)
    —Lenin

[17]P. 205. “This is even silly,” observes R. N. S. in a footnote to
      this passage. Quite so. But is not R. N. S.’s reasoning on pp. xi-xii of
      his preface, cited above, moulded from the same clay?
    —Lenin

[18]Witte’s Memorandum, pp. 122-23.The Constitution of Count
	Loris-Melikov, p. 24.
    —Lenin

[19]“The economic organisations of the workers,” says Mr. R. N. S. in
      another passage,"Will serve as a school for the real political education
      of the working masses." We would advise our author to be more careful in
      employing the term “real”, which has been worn thin by the
      knights of opportunism. It cannot be denied that under certain conditions
      their economic organisations may help the workers very considerably in
      their political training (no more than it can be denied that under other
      circumstances they may help in their political demoralisation). But the
      masses of the workers can obtainrealpolitical training only by
      their participation in all aspects of the revolutionary movement,
      including open street fighting and civil war against the defenders of
      political and economic slavery.
    —Lenin

[20]See the extremely detailed treatment of this aspect of the question in the
      pamphlet by P. B. Axelrod,The Historical Position and the Mutual
      Relations between Liberal and Socialist Democracy in Russia, Geneva,
      1898. See particularly pp. 5, 8, 11-12, 17-19.
    —Lenin

[21]I.e., a one per cent wage increase.—Tr.

[22]As to what may be expected from the Zemstvo, it may not be
      without interest to quote the following opinion expressed by Prince
      P. V. Dolgorukov in hisListok,[57]published in the sixties (Burtsev, op. cit., pp. 64-67): “In
      examining the main regulations governing the Zemstvo institutions, we
      again come across the selfsame secret thought of the government, which
      continually breaks out into the light, viz., to overwhelm with generosity,
      to proclaim loudly, ’See how much I am giving you!’—yet to give as
      little as possible, and even to impose restrictions upon the enjoyment of
      the little that is given.... Under the present autocratic system, the
      Zemstvo institu tions do not and cannot bring any benefits, and will not
      and cannot have any significance, but they are rich in the seeds of
      fruitful development in the future.... New Zemstvo institutions may well
      be destined to serve as the basis for the future constitutional order in
      Russia.... But as long as Russia lacks a constitutional system of
      government, as long as the autocracy exists, and as long as freedom of the
      press is denied, the Zemstvo institutions will be doomed to remain
      political phantoms,muteassemblies of those who should voice the
      interests of the people." Thus, even in the sixties, Dolgorukov was not
      very optimistic. The forty years that have passed since then have taught
      us much and have demonstrated that the Zemstvos were destined by
      “fate” (and partly by the government) to serve as the basis
      for a series of measuresto overwhelmthe constitutionalists.
    —Lenin

[23]The present writer had occasion to point out the utility of a liberal
      party four years ago, in commenting upon the Narodnoye Pravo

      Party.[58]SeeThe Tasks of the Russian Social-Democrats(Geneva, 1893,
      p. 26): "... If, however, the party [Narodnoye Pravo] also contains
      not masquerade, but real non-socialist politicians, non- socialist
      democrats, then this party can do no little good by striving to draw
      closer to the political opposition among our bourgeoisie (See present
      edition, Vol. 2, p. 345.—Ed.)
    —Lenin

[24]“The Persecutors of the Zemstvo and the Hannibals of
	  Liberalism”is a criticism of the confidential Memorandum,
	  “The Autocracy and the Zemstvo”, written by the tsarist
	  minister S.Y. Witte and published abroad illegally, and of the preface
	  to it written by the liberal P. B. Struve.

Lenin’sarticle occasioned serious disagreement among the editors ofIskra, Plekhanov and several other members of the Editorial
	Board expressing themselves against it.

Thepolemic over the article which the Board members conducted in their
	correspondence lasted about a month. Lenin accepted some suggestions to
	alter certain particular formulations, but emphatically refused to
	modify the sharp tone of exposure and the direction of the
	article.

[48]Zarya(Dawn)—a Marxist scientific and
      political magazine published in Stuttgart in 1901-02 by theIskraEditorial Board.

Thefollowing articles of Lenin were published inZarya:
      “Casual Notes”, “The Persecutors of the Zemstvo and the
      Hannibals of Liberalism”, the first four chapters of “The
      Agrarian Questionand the ‘Critics of Marx’\thinspace” (published tinder the title
      “The ’Critics’ on the Agrarian Question”), “Review of Home
      Affairs”, “The Agrarian Programme of Russian
      Social-Democracy”. Altogether four numbers (in three issues)
      appeared: No. 1—April ’1901 (actually on March 23, new style);
      Nos. 2-3—December 1901, and No. 4—August 1902.

[25]The “Regulations Governing Redemption by Peasants Who Have
	Emerged from Serf Dependence”signed by Alexander II on
	February 19, 1861, together with the Manifesto announcing the abolition
	of serfdom.

[49]Kolokol(The Bell)—a revolutionary periodical
      published under the motto ofVivos voco!(I call on the living!)
      by A. I. Herzen and N. P. Ogaryov from July 1, 1857 to April 1865, in
      London and from 1865 to December ’1868, in Geneva. In 1868 the periodical
      was published in French with a supplement in Russian.Kolokolwas
      published in an edition of 2,500 copies and spread throughout Russia. It
      exposed the tyranny of the autocracy, the plunder and embezzlement of the
      civil servants, and the ruthless exploitation of the peasants by the
      landlords.

Kolokolwas the leading organ of the revolutionary uncensored
      press and the precursor of the working-class press in Russia; it played an
      important role in the development of the general-dem ocratic and
      revolutionary movement, in the struggle against the autocracy and against
      serfdom.

LaRevue des deux mondes(Review of the Two
      Worlds)—a French bourgeois-liberal monthly published in Paris
      from 1829 to 1940. It began as a literary and art journal, but
      subsequently began to devote considerable space to philosophy and
      politics. Some of the most eminent writers contributed to the
      review—- among them Victor Hugo, George Sand, Honoré de
      Balzac, and Alexandre Dumas. Since 1948 it has been published under the
      titleLa Revue. Literature, histoire, arts et sciences des deux mondes
      (The Review. The literature, history, arts and sciences of the two
      worlds).

[50]Katkov, M.N.—reactionary journalist. From 1851 he editedMoskovskiye Vedomosti (Moscow Recorder).He was a rabid opponent,
      not only of the revolutionary movement, but of all social progress.

[26]Civil mediator—an administrative office instituted by the
      tsarist government at the time of the implementation of the ’Peasant
      Reform” of 1861. The civil mediators, appointed by the governor from
      among the local nobility, were empowered to investigate and render
      decisions on conflicts between peasants and land lords that occurred
      during the implementation of the “Regulations” on the
      emancipation of the peasants; they were actually intended to be protectors
      of the interests of the ruling classes. The chief function of the civil
      mediators was to draw up “titledeeds” which gave the precise dimensions of the peasants’ allotments
      and their location, as well as details of the obligations of the peasants;
      the mediators were also charged with the supervision of peasant local
      self-government bodies. The mediators approved the elected officials of
      the peasant administration, had the right to impose penalties upon them,
      to arrest or fine them, and to annul the decisions of village meetings.

Inthis passage Lenin refers to the liberal-minded civil mediators in Tver
      Gubernia, who refused to implement the “Regulations” and who
      decided to be guided in their work by the decisions of the Assembly of the
      Nobility in their gubernia; this Assembly, in February 1862, had formally
      recognised the unsatisfactory nature of the “Regulations” and
      the necessity for the immediate redemption of peasant lands with state
      aid, as well as the introduction of a number of democratic
      institutions. The Tver civil mediators were arrested by the tsarist
      government and each was sentenced to over two years’ imprisonment.

[27]Raznochintsi(i.e., “men of different estates”)—the
      Russian commoner-intellectuals, drawn from the small townsfolk, the
      clergy, the merchant classes, the peasantry, as distinct from those drawn
      from the nobility.

[28]To Young Russia—a proclamation issued by
      P. G. Zaichnevaky’s revolutionary group in May 1862. The proclamation
      called for revolutionary action against the autocracy and advanced the
      slogan for a social and democratic Russian republic” in the form of
      a federation of the regions.

[29]Chernyshevsky, N. G.(1828-1889)—the great Russian
      revolutionary democrat, materialist philosopher, scholar, critic, and
      author; the leader of the revolutionary movement in the sixties of the
      past century. In 1862 Chernyshevsky was arrested and sentenced to 14
      years’ penal servitude and exile for life in Siberia; he was allowed to
      return only in 1883. Chernyshevsky had a tremendous influence on the
      development of Russian progressive social thought.

[51]At the Glorious Post—a collection published by the
      Narodniks to commemorate forty years of literary and social activity
      (1860-1900) of the Narodnik ideologist N. K. Mikhailovsky.

[52]Sovremennik(The Contemporary)—a monthly
      scientific, political, and literary journal founded by Alexander Pushkin;
      published in St. Petersburg from 1836 to 1866. From 1847 it was published
      by N. A. Nekrasov and I. I. Panayev. Among the contributors were
      V. G. Belinsky, N. G. Chernyshevsky, M. A. Dobrolyubov, N. V. Shelgunov,
      M. Y. Saltykov-Shchedrin, and M. A. Antonovich.Sovremennikwas
      the most progressive journal of its day; it voiced the aspirations of
      revolutionary democracy. It was closed down by the tsarist government in
      1866.

[53]Russkoye Slovo(Russian Word)—a prominently
      progressive literary and political monthly published in St. Petersburg
      from 1859 to 1866; among its contributors were D. I. Pisarev and
      N. V. Shelgunov. The journal had considerable influence among the youth of
      the sixties.It was closed down by the tsarist government in 1866.

[54]Dyen (The Day)—aweekly newspaper published in Moscow from
      1861 to 1865 by I. S. Aksakov.

[55]Literary Fund(The Literary Fund Society for Aid to Indigent
      Writers and Scientists and Their Families)—a legal benevolent
      society founded in St. Petersburg in 1859 with the participation of
      N. G. Chernyshevsky. Under the pretext of helping indigent writers and
      scientists, the organisers made an attempt to muster the progressive,
      revolutionary-minded section of the intelligentsia. In April 1862 an
      attempt was made by progressives to establish a legal student society
      through the founding of a “Department for Aid to Poor
      Students”. The Department was headed by a student committee. A
      considerable section of the committee was connected with the illegal
      revolutionary organisation Zemlya i Volya (Land and Freedom). In June 1862
      the Department was closed by the tsarist government.

[56]The Chess Clubwas founded on the initiative of
      N. G. Chernyshevsky and his closest associates in St. Petersburg in
      January 1862. Among the leading members of the Club were N. A. Nekrasov,
      the brothers A. A. and N. A. Serno-Solovyevich, the brothers V. S. and
      N. S. Kurochkin, P. L. Lavrov, G. Y. Blagosvetlov, G. Z. Yeliseyev, and
      N. G. Pomyalovsky. Members of the illegal Zemlya i Volya organisation also
      belonged to the Club. The Chess Club was actually a literary club, the
      centre of the St. Petersburg revolutionary-minded intelligentsia. In June
      1862 the Club was closed by the Tsarist government.

[30]Radishchev, A. N.(1749-1802)—-Russian writer and
      revolutionary. In his famous workA Journey from St. Petersburg to
      Moscow, he made the first open attack on serfdom in Russia. By order
      of Catherine If he was sentenced to death for the book, but the sentence
      was commuted to 10 years’ exile in Siberia, He returned from exile under
      amnesty, hut when the tsarist government threatened him with new
      persecutions he committed suicide. Lenin considered Radishchev to have
      been one of the most out standing champions of progress among the Russian
      people.

[31]Arakcheyev, A.A—reactionary tsarist statesman at the end
      of the eighteenth and the beginning of nineteenth centuries; he greatly
      influenced home and foreign policies during the reigns of Paul I and
      Alexander I. An epoch of unlimited police despotism and the outrages of
      the controlling military is associated with his name
      (“Arakcheyevshchisia”).

[32]The Decembrist Revolt—led by a group of revolutionaries
      from the nobility who opposed the autocracy and serfdom.

[33]Lenin refers to the participation of the troops of Tsar Nicholas I in the
      suppression of the revolutionary movement in Europe in 1848-49
      particularly the revolution in Hungary in 1849.

[34]États généraux(The States
      General)—a representative hody of the social-estates of France
      from the fourteenth to the eighteenth cen tury, consisting of deputies
      from the nobility, the clergy, and the Third Estate; it was convened by
      the king for the settlement of administrative and financial questions. The
      States General were not convened for 175 years—from 1614 to
      1789. When they were convened in 1789 by Louis XVI for the purpose of
      settling the financial crisis, the hody was proclaimed as the National
      Assembly by a decision of the deputies representing the Third Estate.

[35]Herzen, A. I.(1812-1870)—prominent Russian revolutionary
      democrat, materialist philosopher, publicist, and author. p. 42

[36]General Vannovsky, appointed Minister of Education in 1901, made
      use of liberal phrases such as “love” and “heartfelt
      solicitude” for the student youth, with the aim of quietening the
      student disturbances. After introducing a numher of insignificant reforms
      in the sphere of education, he resorted to renewed repressive measures
      against the revolutionary students—arrests, banishment, expulsions
      from universities, etc.

[37]Volnoye Slovo(Free Word)—a weekly,, and from
      No. 37 a fort-nightly, periodical published in Geneva from 1881 to 1883;
      alto gether 62 issues appeared.Volnoye Slovoclaimed to have as
      its pur pose the unification of opposition elements and propagated liberal
      ideas on the need to reform the Russian social system on “principles
      of freedom and self-government”. Actually it was founded with the
      knowledge of the secret police by members of the Holy Guard (a secret
      organisation promoted by the biggest landed nobility and high government
      officials, headed hy Prince A. P. Shuvalov and others) for purposes of
      political provocation.Volnoye Slovowas edited by the police
      agent A. P. Malshinsky.

Atthe end of 1882 the Holy Guard collapsed andVolnoye Slovo,
      beginning with No. 52 (January 8, 1883), was edited by M. P. Dra gomanov;
      it claimed to be the organ of the Zemstvo League, which did not exist as a
      permanent and properly-constituted organisation.

[38]Pravitelstvenny Vestnik(Government
	Herald)—official government newspaper published in
      St. Petersburg from 1869 to 1917.

[39]The Assembly of Notables of Louis XVI—an assembly of the
      highest representatives of the privileged social-estates of France
      convened by King Louis XVI in 1787 and 1788 to settle the country’s
      financialcrisis. The Assembly refused to pass an ordinance taxing the
      priv ileged social-estates and Louis XVI was forced to convene the States
      General.

[40]Dictatorship of the heart—the name given ironically to the
      short-lived policy of flirting with the liberals, pursued by the tsarist
      official Loris-Mehikov, who, in 1880, was appointed chief of the Supreme
      Administrative Commission to combat “sedition” and, later,
      Minister of the Interior.

[41]Sotsial-Demokrat(Social-Democrat)— a
      literary-political review published abroad by the Emancipation of Labour
      group in the period 1890-92. Altogether four issues appeared.

Leninquotes an article by Vera Zasulich entitled ’Revolution aries from
      the Bourgeois Milieu”, published in No. I for 1890.

[42]Narodnaya Volya(The People’s Will)—a secret
      Narodnik terrorist organisation, whose members carried out the
      assassination of Alexander II, on March 1, 1881; it came into being in
      August. 1879, following the split in the secret society Zemlya i Volya
      (Land and Freedom). The Narodnaya Volyn was headed by an Executive
      Committee which included A. I. Zhelyabov, A. D. Mikhailov, M. F. Frolenko,
      N. A. Morozov, V. N. Figner, S. L. Perovskaya, and A. A. Kvyatkovsky. The
      immediate aim of the Narodnaya Volya was the overthrow of the tsarist
      autocracy while its programme provided for the establishment of a
      “permanent popular representative body” elected on the basis
      of universal suffrage, the proclamation of democratic liberties, the
      transfer of land to the people, and the elaboration of measures for the
      factories to pass into the hands of the workers. The Narodnaya Volya,
      however, was unable to find the road to the masses of the people and took
      to political conspiracy and individual terror. The terrorist struggle of
      the Narodnaya Volya was not supported by a mass revolutionary movement;
      this enabled the government to crush the organisation by fierce
      persecution, death sentences, and provocation.

After1881 the Narodnaya Volya ceased to exist as an
      organisation. Repeated attempts to revive it, made during the 1880s ended
      in failure. An instance was the terrorist group that was formed in 1886,
      headed by A. I. Ulyanov (Lenin’s brother) and P. Y. Shevyrev; after an
      unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Alexander Ill the group was exposed
      and its active members were executed.

Althoughhe criticised the erroneous, utopian programme of the Narodnaya
      Volya, Lenin showed great respect for the selfless struggle waged by its
      members against tsarism. In 1899, in “A Protest by Russian
      Social-Democrats”, Lenin stated that “the members of the old
      Narodnaya Volya managed to play an enormous role in the history of Russia,
      despite the fact that only narrow social strata supported the few heroes,
      and despite the fact that it was by no means a revolutionary theory which
      served as the banner of the movement” (see present edition, Vol. 4,
      p. 181).

[43]Land redemption paymentswere fixed by the
      “Regulations Governing Redemption by Peasants Who Have Emerged from
      Serf Dependence”, approved on February 19, 1861. The tsarist
      government compelled peasants to pay redemption money for the land
      allotted to them at a rate several times higher than the actual value of
      the land. Upon the conclusion of the redemption deal, the government paid
      a sum of money to the landlord as redemption money, which sum was regarded
      as a debt to be repaid by the peasant in annual instalments over a period
      of 49 years. The “land redemption payments” were unbearably
      burdensome for the peasants and led to mass ruin and
      pauperisation. Peasants who had formerly been landlord’s serfs alone paid
      a sum of about 2,000 million rubles to the tsarist government, while the
      land they received was not worth more than 544 million rubles. Since the
      deals did not take effect immediately, but at various times up to 1883,
      the payments were to have continued until 1932. The peasant movement at
      the time of the First Russian Revolution (1905-07), however, compelled the
      tsarist government to cancel the land redemption payments as from January
      1907.

[44]Rural superintendent—an office instituted by the tsarist
      government in 1889 to increase the power of the landlords over the
      peasantry. The rural superintendents, appointed from among the local
      landed nobility, were granted tremendous powers, not only administrative,
      but juridical, which included the right to arrest peasants and order
      corporal punishment.

[45]“Separate Supplement”to Rabochaya
      Mysl—a pamphlet published by the editors of the
      “Economist” newspaperRabochaya Myslin September
      1899. The pamphlet, especially the included article “Our
      Reality”, signedR. M., was a candid exposé of the
      opportunist views of the “Economists”. Lenin criticised the
      pamphlet in his article “A Retrograde Trend in Russian
      Social-Democracy” (see present edition, Vol. 4, pp. 255-85), and in
      his bookWhat Is To Be Done?(see present volume, pp. 361-67,
      397, 407-08).

[46]Bernsteinism—an anti-Marxist trend in international
      Social-Democracy which arose in Germany at the end of the nineteenth
      century and derived its name from the German Social-Democrat Eduard
      Bernstein. Bernstein set out to revise the revolutionary teachings of Marx
      in the spirit of bourgeois liberalism.

InRussia Bernsteinism had its adherents in the “legal
      Marxists”, the “Economists”, the Bundists, and the
      Mensheviks. p. 73

[57]Listok(Small Paper)—a monthly newspaper of
      constitutional liberal views published illegally abroad by Prince
      P. V. Dolgorukov. Altogether twenty-two numbers were issued between
      November 1862 and July 1864. The first five numbers were issued in
      Brussels, the others in London.

[58]Narodnoye Pravo (People’s Right) Party—an underground
      organisation of the democratic intelligentsia formed in 1893, with theassistance of ex-members of theNarodnaya Volya(M. A. Natanson
      and others), and crushed by the tsarist government in the spring of
      1894. The Narodnoye Pravo issued two programmatic documents “An
      Urgent Question” and “Manifesto”. Most of the Narodnoye
      Pravo members subsequently joined the Socialist Revolutionary Party.

[47]Lenin refers here to a thesis in Marx’sThe Class Struggles in France,
	1848 to 1850(see Marx and Engels,Selected Works, Vol. I,
	Moscow, 1958, p. 139).